Atomfall, Wanderstop, WWE 2K25 | Noclip Crewcast

Hello friends and welcome to episode 219 of the Noclip Podcast. It's a crew cast. If you watch this on YouTube, you'll notice the 30 seconds of madness we do beforehand because we have all this music playing and we need to have something happening on the screen.

Jesse was playing some sort of instrument, I think, but it kind of just looked like he was doing heroin.

Or not heroin, sorry, he was smoking meth.

Sorry. I might have been before, but I'm not now.

I was playing my little trombone, my little, it's a miniature trombone.

hey uh danny could you tell me a sad fact not something so sad but just like a little sad oh um i was supposed to have a big saint patrick's day party at my house this weekend which i do and invite um friends and and whatnot but uh in typical irish tradition it rains too much and we had to cancel it i was expecting you to blow into it i don't know what i was doing i was too also i think if the police pull you over and you're smoking meth out of a tiny trombone they have to let you go because you're like he's too cool to do it and then you go it's like this uh little known 18th century law actually

has been covered on this one yeah exactly madness madness we have a lot of video games to talk about this week uh frank's here as well hey frank hello good morning what's it say on your shirt because if you if i was dyslexic i would think that it said swastika but it says no it says saki kashima and kenshiro stardom so it's It's a collaboration between Saki Kashima and Kichiro.

A fist of the North Star.

There's also kanji on it, but I think this also says fist of the North Star.

Hakuto no shinken. Perfect.

Love it. Absolutely love it.

That's why you're here, Frank.

You add that spice.

You have a much needed spice.

We don't have, well, I'm not spicy.

I'm potato boy. I'm sure the rest of you guys are pretty spicy.

You know who's also spicy?

Our incredible patrons over at patreon .com slash noclip.

Thank you all the folks who signed up in the past week.

I think myself and Ben Hanson's support group had some people thinking, and you know what, I think I'll chip in a little bit to these motherfuckers, so we really appreciate it, thank you all, it's been rad seeing folks pop up in the Discord and chat about why they appreciate our work, so thank you so much, and we also appreciate all of you, including our Battle Pass holders Anthony Thomas, Nico Bassetteri, It's -a -me, Ferrario Penelope Hayes, Senator Armstrong Eamon Slattery, Harry Flanagan Joosh, Arno, Richard Matherson Matt Pearson, James Brown Mark Rojas, Tucker Morgan David McGarry, Sven Uster,

Pez Thank you all so much for supporting us.

You absolute legends.

We were making video game documentaries.

There's a bunch of stuff.

We're going to talk about Dwarf Arch stuff in a little bit.

First episode should be out by the time you're listening to this.

And a little bit of a trailer I put together.

uh last night uh like shot at like midnight because i was like oh we need to put something up that explains why we're doing why we do anything because we just don't you know we just don't explain stuff it's bad i don't explain stuff i don't say we we it's rests on my shoulders but we're not here to talk about that so we're gonna talk about a bunch of uh a bunch of new video games adam falls embargo should hopefully have dropped by the time this goes live yeah 7 7am Pacific on Friday Jesse.

So that's 7am. A little bit later than usual.

So sorry Europe. But you won't be sorry hopefully when you listen to these hot off the press reactions.

Jesse's got to talk about Wanderstop and Expelled.

Frank has played the new wrestling game WWE 2K25.

Jeremy's got some interesting weird ass indie games to talk about as well.

So we've got a whole smorgasbord of video games to talk gentlemen because it's embargo day i think adam fall should go first sure mind drop some adams on us man so i i know i knew nothing about this thing nothing i think i maybe saw a logo or saw uh maybe a little teaser i don't know i it just did not cross my my eyeballs at all what do you guys know about adam fall right now right right right today right now what do you know about it this is a new rebellion game yes uh that's like stalker e a little bit uh it's a first -person survival -ish game i feel like fair okay okay frank do you know anything

just from what the steam page has i've never seen the trailer while i go the survival action game i don't know is it like fallout is it like soccer is it multiplayer forced or forced multiplayer is this single player game that's the number one question big questions i love it jeremy what about you is this fresh fresh to you as well this is fresh to me frank scooped me though i was just gonna read the steam description and be like yeah if i had to guess i'd say it's probably like a nuclear disaster has left an area of britain in tatters or something wow i like you i don't know just you're clairvoyant everyone

on the pod does their homework for what's on the document by at least reading the steam page that's kind of that's that's the bare minimum i i expect anyway so fair play yeah this is um this is from rebellion which is like a If you grew up playing PC games in the 90s, man, like Alien vs. Predator, that Rebellion logo comes up.

You're like, yeah, baby, let's do it.

It's a cool logo. They worked on a bunch of stuff over the years on PC and on the PlayStation as well.

They're sort of a strange historical studio because they've been around since the early 90s.

But they've also done a lot of work for higher stuff.

off they have a couple of um sort of go -to's at the moment sniper elite is kind of their their main uh franchise at this stage and they brought another evil genius out last year i think a couple years ago it was at this stage um but they haven't had like anything outside of those i would say that hit really hard um in a while this game is great this game is like this game is is makes me feel real good about playing video games it makes me feel real good about seeing that rebellion logo pop up so this is you were all right it is all what you talked about and it but it is also like very singular

like what i i love about this game i think the it's full of very smart economic design choices which i think pare the game down in a way that we have kind of seen with a lot of these first -person rpgs but this one does not feel small like some of the other ones do feel like smaller versions of big games so i can't complete any of these games because new ones keep coming out i went back to play stalker 2 at the start of the year kingdom con deliverance comes out and trips me out of that avowed comes out and trips me out of that and then this one is coming this is like year of the i know stalker

2 is last year but this is this is like era of the first person open world rpg uh thing and this one sort of i would say scale wise is sort of avowed sized maybe something like that i hear it's like 20 something hours i'm seven hours in at the moment map size wise kind of similar it's a bunch of discrete zones that are connected via either gates or tunnels so there are loading you know loading screens between those or if you go into certain large buildings and things like that um what you You emerge, you know, tell me if you heard this one before you emerge from a sort of an underground bunker

with amnesia into basically like beautiful North England, like stony towns, stone walls, chap, you know, little churches with vicars in it.

It's very twee. It's like something you'd see on a, you know, postcard or something like that.

but unfortunately the area that you're in uh this like couple of miles of area is uh sort of in a bubble like people can't get out of it because this event happened at this nuclear power station or this power station um it is not nuclear in origin the issue it's like sort of maybe i don't know yet and obviously a big part of this game is unraveling the secret but but essentially everyone in this world is like stuck here.

All the people in like a local village are stuck.

There are armies of bandits walking around who are just like trying to survive.

There is a army presence within this world.

There are some people who live in the woods.

I'm going to be very careful about spoilers on this because I think I enjoyed this so much because I knew nothing about it.

And unraveling the world has been so much fun because I think the world design is fantastic.

It feels very well realized.

it feels very like kind of campy and fun and also like believable within its world it does the same thing as kingdom come deliverance i don't like i feel bad for stalker 2 in a way because obviously one of the things that people have said about that game is that the performance in it is unfortunately a little bit um uh shaky kingdom come obviously was like we were like oh man this game looks great like the forest look great this looks i don't know if it looks better but it looks looks insanely good i don't know what engine it's on or what they're doing uh from a rendering like distance perspective

it's incredible and then from an art design perspective like the colors in it are really cool like there's been a couple of games who have tried to do this sort of like british outdoor the funky thing like remember we happy few a few years ago which had like you know that sort of like it's like i don't know what you call it like brit horror or something thing um there's a great game years ago regular britain let's just go on exactly exactly there's two there's two types there is the um the the thank goodness you're here england and then there is the uh the the ones you see in these in these games

scary for different reasons exactly um there was a game years ago the jim rosnell um game developer and ex -pc gamer writer uh brought out called sir you are being hunted um i'm not sure you guys ever played it yeah so i get a little bit bit of vibe of that from this one because it's kind of like outdoorsy and there are some mechanical you know robotic kind of things there's one type I guess but that's that's um that's not neither here nor there I guess but there's there's elements of that there's like this weird sort of like 80s tech or what tech would look like if it was like super powered in the 80s

or 70s like that's kind of where this feels like it's a little bit um so it just looks fantastic first of all and then the gameplay is like a really smart like like i said pared down but doesn't feel like it's a half measure or half serving you're getting like your inventory slots you only have like maybe 20 or so and then like four for weapons uh and then so you're doing a lot of juggling there's no currency in the game so when you're finding people to like trade with you're basically doing barter and some of them prefer some things over others like some prefer weapons some prefer explosives

some prefer for medicines and then you're basically like giving them stuff and they're giving stuff back to you the combat as well is like you don't use that much ammo it's like weirdly resident evilly in terms of the amount of like bullets you have to put into somebody to kill them like if you get a shotgun blast up front on one of these people or get a headshot you'll take them out right away or might take you a couple of like hits with an arrow or a low -powered gun or something like that to get them so if they're in packs they can be quite dangerous and you have to be like tactical with like

explosives and stuff uh but you're not like you you know you might have 20 rounds in your gun so like you're you're thinking about it when you're going in how much ammunition you have and stuff like that scarcity with the ammo like are you are you trying to hold on to your bullets it's i think it's a really well done balancing act because it doesn't feel like it's scarcity like like like you're really struggling for ammo but it definitely stops you going like hell for leather and killing everyone like it kind of stops you like going into a base and then expecting that you have enough ammo to kill

like 10 people um because also they don't drop all that much you kind of find the ammo more than you get it off people um which is which is quite cool like some of them are just melee like you can play this game whole this whole game melee as well there's a big focus on melee combat if you want i've not been doing that but um can you stealth is that's also an option there is some stealth like there's kind of hot tall grass you can get in it's all during the daytime perpetually there is some indoor stuff that has some stealth stuff But again, it's like there's something about the game.

It's not overly systemic.

It like feels like it's somewhere between a IMSA and like, you know, a regular Half -Life first person experience.

Like it feels more of like an upgraded version of a of a regular sort of, you know, Half -Life, you know, first person point to point game.

Then it does like a smaller version of those.

And I don't really know how they do it.

But I think maybe it's because there's something maybe about the art side of the camera and everything that makes it feel a bit more like you're like like maybe the art side so dense that it feels more about what's immediately in front of you rather than what's out there, I guess.

But yeah, it's not it's yeah, it feels kind of more like that.

There's there's a lot of like Half -Life 2 vibes off this as well.

Like, in fact, there's even like a gnome Chomsky thing in one of the towns.

There's a bunch of garden gnomes that you can punch. And I think maybe if you get them all, you get something.

I don't know but you know that the visuals of it the sort of like um you know the tech horror meets uh regular people's towns is kind of a feel here like the art direction is really really really strong and each area has its own thing so like the area you start in is sort of like a valley and like I said I mentioned there is a wood and there's like a little place where some people live and there's there's a bunch of these things and then obviously you're exploring you know buildings and industry and you know secret things that you know people didn't know were there and and stuff like that yeah

what's the structure of that because you're talking about the exploration but like why what's your motivation for doing anything in the game is it quest based do you sort of return to a hub multiple times what's that like so it's it's really it's really interesting and bizarre can you hear a frog by any chance is that that's what it is i thought there was a witch outside is this frog gonna go off the whole time i swear to god it's 10 o 'clock man sometimes these frogs do this it's all right i thought that was outside of my house ten in the morning come on do you guys want to talk about yourselves

and let me kill a frog for three minutes uh i'm not gonna kill the frog i'll show you i won't he's gonna bring the frog you guys talk it's like monster hunter i can't exactly i'm gonna go i'm gonna go cook cook my food and go you guys talk about yourselves i just we can't put our patron our listeners to the shit for sure or me uh so adam fall guys what do you think so far from what danny's saying what What are we saying out of ten?

Seven? Five? There's an achievement.

I was looking at the PlayStation trophies.

There's an achievement for eating a pastry, having tea, and having a slice of cake.

So I'm like, yeah. Holy shit.

It is Britain. It's just a British life simulator.

So I really like the Sniper.

I almost called them Sniper.

Yeah. You love those Sniper Elite games.

So it's like, these games are, I don't know.

I love those games.

I'm down to try. It is on Game Pass day one on Friday.

Let's go, baby. I'll give it a shot.

i'm about i'm about to i'm cresting a hundred thousand gamer scores so if you know i don't know what's gonna take me over the edge it's like finding the you know it's like looking for a prom date what's gonna be the right game that's gonna get me you gotta be careful with that man the vice president you become vice president when you get a hundred thousand gamer score it's it's a fact no you're gonna become jd vance i yeah i can't pick any yeah you can't pick any running mate to get you that to get you there i feel like we talked about this before i can't remember but i i'm at like 98 000 so i

can i can i can i can i can you know i almost said dip my teeth dip my tea and i'm trying to use british expression oh that's good my tea bag in there i would uh i would love a presidential debate where they were debating the merits of their gamer score where they're like listen i've got like a hundred thousand and the other guy's like yeah but that's bullshit because you're always playing games where you get like we all know you played the legend of korra game and you were bullshitting a thousand gamer score you just We all know you went to Blockbuster, just grabbed all the easy games.

You bought all those $1 games, the crappy indie things.

We know. We saw you.

You went to the Walmart dollar bin and bought fucking Nicktoons Adventure.

That is not what your gamer score can do for you.

America needs – how long until we get the first gamer president?

Like how long until – I mean Elon Musk is already in there, isn't he?

Wait, no, he faked it all.

Sorry, never mind. Number one, he's not president.

Number two, he's a fake gamer.

I mean, I don't know.

it looks looks that way up here listen i didn't elect him and i i've never seen his we need to audit his gamer score at some point for this country it's like remember when obama was the president and people were like truthers about like his birth certificate i'm that way but for a gamer score we're doing that with with elon musk he was saying he was like a big uh number one on what was it diablo 4 or something or path of exile 2 yeah someone saw him at a rally and and then he was also logged in in a dungeon at the same time.

Yeah, he was getting boosted.

What a faker. The one thing that sounds promising about Adam Falls, it's not a multiplayer extraction.

That's what I thought it was at first, too.

Anytime I see the setting, it's like, all right, is it multiplayer?

I just want to – Yeah, I thought it was a Chernobylite kind of thing, but I guess not.

One of my favorite games I played last year is when I finally played Fallout 4.

So I was like, dude, if this is like Fallout 4, I'm in, I'm in.

This does remind me a bit of Fallout London that Danny – he was talking about that mod last year.

yeah i wanted to can he get back and kill that frog or not whatever unless he muted the mic oh yeah then we don't hear like yeah i'm yeah cleaving it good point um like a little tiny scream um yeah this is like the uh the country equivalent of fallout london uh have you guys ever seen uh wicker man the original wicker man not the nicholas cage one oh yeah no um oh man i've it's a very strange movie very weird and so it's like um uh this city cop goes to this like rural community to investigate a weird sort of nature cults um and hijinks ensue has a very weird scene where uh one of the cultists

is trying to seduce him but it all happens through the wall so they're both kind of just like rubbing on the wall and it cuts between them a very weird sort of like horny 70s folk horror movie but uh this clearly is referencing wicker man yeah and that second screenshot has the giant wicker man yeah yeah are you guys just talking about killer yeah yeah well we were also talking about auditing the president's gamer score yeah great can't wait to listen back on this um i couldn't find the i like cleaned out all the gunk i don't know where um turn around danny he's right behind you man frogs just

go away anyway where were we atomfall yeah no frauds out of 10 what are you saying single single player game it's not multiplayer totally single player yeah story based oh so that jesse was asking about the quest stuff so it uses like a weird system and i'm not totally bought into this um although i see why i kind of get why it works because it focuses the player so i so here's the first thing i don't know if there's any fast travel in this game i have have never found us the review guide i don't think had anything about fast travel in it um i kind of skimmed the review guy because it was a bit

spoilery so i didn't want to read too much of it um so i could be wrong i'll put that caveat in there but i don't know if there's any way to quickly zip around the map except there's a sort of a there's one way but it involves still involves walking around and it only saves you a little bit of time so the um the quest is it's kind of like what's it called they don't call it a hint system they don't call tips tips they call leads the lead system and basically what it does is anytime you talk to somebody and they give you information because they're on npc there are npcs in this world um and if you

find a note for instance that says something you're reading a lot of notes um it gives you a lead and these leads can kind of be part of you know a specific they don't use the word quest i think for a very good reason but um there can be like you might pick up and it might go in with like four other leads with this like you know story that you're you're basically in and they divide the leads up into the different parts of the map that you might be in you know these sort of distinct open zones and um it sort of works in that like when you go into an area it tells you how many leads open leads you

have and um there are no quests so there's no quest markers and the map is like weird like you kind of have to read the map like they don't really tell you where to ago they don't like put a dot on the map for you and some of the leads early on actually had coordinates like x y coordinates that i was able to use to find stuff um but largely what they do is they sort of draw in things on your map so when you get the map at the start it's just like a paper map that has like the area in it when you walk into an area it gives you the whole area but then as you're walking around you're discovering

settlements or villages or things or whatever points of interest in the world and then they it almost gets like sketched in on top of it so it's this very light touch thing of like you have to sort of be self -motivated to find stuff um and i think it works because what ends up happening is if there was a main quest and there is like you can clearly tell what the most important thing is it's the first kind of lead you get and you know it it exists in a in a in an import above everything else that's very self -evident um but what happens is that like instead of sort of i guess i think the the reason and maybe

this works and i haven't i just don't know quite yet is because instead of prioritizing the sort of ones that seem like they are the most important um you end up kind of just doing the ones that are close to you um in your area you're in or or ones that you can kind of nip around and do and another important thing to mention is you're not getting xp for any of this there are no there isn't there is an unlock system and there are upgrades you can get but the it's very like like interestingly handled you literally there there's an object you can pick up in the world which is basically like a training

stimulant that you can use to learn one of the things and you you know one of the perks might be worth the three of them or one of them or six of them or whatever these things these objects you find and then you also it's just lying around exactly yeah yeah um and then the actual recipes for both like things that you can make like bandages for instance if you get hurt or um uh you know like like the one of the skills like the the ability to i don't know fix your gun reload your gun faster or something i'm just making one up at the top of my head a lot of those are actually like ones that you can either

find or buy from traders like you can buy them um and some of them cost a you know a decent amount of you know in this bartering system so it's really like handing this stuff out piece by piece and it's not really a thing where like if If you do a bunch of side quests, you get OP because you've you've you've harvested all this XP and now you're like level 20 going into the area.

It doesn't really work like that.

And this is where it feels like this game has like dozens of very smart, discreet design decisions which contribute to this.

Like one of the more obvious ones is like instead of having a stamina bar, you just have your your heart rate is there.

and if you go too high in your heart rate from either swinging and hitting people or running like every stamina thing if it gets above like 180 or whatever you start to like your heartbeat starts getting louder and stuff and it's just like a very like it's a different way of doing something that we've had gamified for a long time but it gives this game personality and its own like vibe and there's loads of that stuff around like there's also these like you'll you notice it in the first five minutes you walk out of the um out of the area you're first in and there's this big you know quintessential

english red telephone box just standing i was gonna ask if those are there hell yeah but and they're they're here but like you it's it rings the minute you walk out it rings and then you answer it and there's like you know there's some so it's a lot of you know what's going on who you know who am i what why am i here what's you know what's real or can people get out out of this can they knock it out of this thing sort of like the island kind of vibe to it um i should get leo vader to play this game um yeah it's uh so it's it's just smart and works and yeah i find it to be just really new and novel

in a weird way and yeah i'm really enjoying it the combat took a little bit to click but now i really like that as well and yeah it's just fun to explore this map and kind of um uncover all the secrets there's so much weird wacky shit that they've put in here and i think you know there's no like big crazy long quests or like companions or or you know it's not like it feels it feels like more writing than you would get in a in a sort of traditional first person game for characters and stuff like that but it's you're not going on these big multi -part quests for people it's it's much more perfunctory

than that so it yeah i really can't compare it to anything else it's not like full rpg like avowed it's not not full simmy shooter like stalker and it's not full uh survivalist game either like you're making bandages and you're doing things like that to to get health but that's because they can't they just don't want to litter health packs everywhere like and you also get health from food so you're just finding cornish pasties and fucking slamming you know what i mean slamming them and tomatoes and shit and just eating them and it gives you a bit of hell so yeah uh i'm curious like tonally is How

serious does it take itself and is it kind of like, is it doing like a little, we're being a little silly or is this like deadpan?

No, it's being silly but it's not comedy game.

What was the Hot Fuzz?

Have you ever seen Hot Fuzz?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is it like that?

It's drifting into that.

It's never full funny like that but it's more that.

It's more like this is, like these, it's kind of, you know.

I wish I could tell you some specifics but I really you don't want to spoil this stuff there's one element of the game that i think jeremy we got a particular kick out of but like some of the people you find are like they're sort of you know in a fog a bit because they're you know it's been like years of them stuck in this thing and like some of them can't remember life before it and some of them are like i think we can get out of here and some aren't and the villages are like there's there are very campy people who are like you know and with the soldiers or with the village or um yeah it's you

know I'm trying to think what other like funny like even the telephone calls are are interesting and funny this like yeah you just meet a bunch of oddballs kind of like in hot fuzz and you're like is there something going else going on here or I don't know but no it's very it's not taking itself seriously at all but it's also not like it's it's believable within the world like it strikes a good balance of you know sincerity when it needs to and you know i i don't want to go on like this the story in this game is like incredible or anything i think the dialogue and the npcs and stuff serve their

purpose and are cool i think the world building aspect is the strongest part of it um and that's the part that i'm um yeah finding interesting and yeah there's there's other bits and bobs like the combat encounters are interesting there's like uh other types of npcs like small like rats and other think bats and things that can affect you in different ways and you have to figure out ways to get past that and there's like tripwires in the world there's there's some things that have been set up by this army that are harder to get into because they've got like alarms around them and things like that so there's

a good variety of you know it's like that um not to keep harping on about half -life but it's like that thing of like there are multiple antagonists in this world that are also don't like each other so you're sort of in the mix and you exist as outside of sort of outside of the um uh politics and culture of these people because you're an outsider because they don't know who you are and they know everyone pretty much right so like they're like oh where did you where'd you come from you know you're not part of this perfection or this faction so they're some of them like you some of them don't um

maybe that can change as well i'm not i'm not quite sure i'm only seven hours in but um yeah it's cool it's it's it's i just love that world it's a fun world to explore you know i like exploring fun worlds nice well it's on game pass so we can fall on some atoms yeah that's right thanks frank for the report hell yeah is it on pc game bus it must be as well yeah day one with xbox game pass world premiere yeah people should definitely play this thing like you'll know within a few minutes if if you're if you're into it i think this i think the yeah the opening is it's very like you're straight into

it like the opening of the game is like five minutes and then you're just playing the game and then it's and then what's wild about it is you can really go in any direction like the the actual area that you started i ended up coming back to ages later i just went wandering off in this other direction and found some cool stuff and then eventually came back yeah good times good times good job adam fall i'm excited to see what the reviews are like because um it seems like a strong strong strong game pretty cool nice uh jesse do you wanna talk about uh wander stop sure i can do that yeah when did

that come out following some addams last week right cool yeah i think so that feels right is this a hard game to talk about because is it like doing something no so yeah you know what let me uh let me lay some groundwork here uh this game was made by i exclusively he's the only person who worked on it davy reeden uh no it's the team ivy road it's uh davy reeden and i want to make sure i get her name right uh carla zamania apologies if i'm butchering that uh founded a studio called ivy road together it's a ton of people worked on this the credits are way longer than i thought they'd be uh but wander

stop is i've talked about it before like way too many times now but it's a cozy game it's a cozy game from people who don't normally make those when you think davy reeden you think the stanley parable you think the beginner's guide please play the beginner's guide it's so good uh the wander stop is not like i'm gonna be straight up it is not the subversive like okay meta game thing that you're looking for this isn't like if you want the stanley parable 2 don't play this it's not i'll say to straight up it is not going to turn into a first person shooter halfway through there is not a british guy

narrating everything you do like it's not that kind of game it is a very straight faced cozy game capital c cozy the thing about it that's subversive and that puts it into that that sort of realm of being compared to Davey's work and honestly, Carla's work as well is that it very pointedly talks about burnout and it talks about recovery and like the challenges that come along with that.

And it does it in this format in this genre that I don't think approaches its own sort of like issues on it.

Most of the games tend to just be like, this is the power fantasy of being free and being allowed to like run a farm and own land.

this game is like pointing at that and saying like is that necessarily right i think a little bit maybe it's me projecting on it somewhat but i think the story of it is very interesting so i'll explain wander stop real quick the the gameplay part of it so you're playing as alta she's this uh woman who's like been fighting for years trying to become the greatest fighter never lose that's her goal eventually she begins to lose and she can't deal with that so in her goal of figuring out why she's losing and trying to become more powerful she escapes into the the forest looking for this trainer who eventually

she collapses the the alta she collapses while she's running through the forest uh and wakes up at the wander stop she meets a character named boro who's like this big galoot like this big lick i imagine the way he's written is sort of broken english so every time he's he says anything i assume he's like eastern european or something like that i don't know what you were wanting uh mrs alta you could do but like it's from that point on you are there and you can't pick up your sword and she can't figure out why and it's like like this really the way it's written and the way it's presented is this very

i think if you don't know what it's like to go through burnout and if you have gone through burnout it's like an eye -opening experience to see it sort of retold in a narrative way like that especially in a video game especially in this genre again that is mostly like people go to relax to play these games um and what you're doing in it is you run the wander stop with moro which is a tea shop in the middle of this forest characters show up the characters are all funny they're all every character is good there's not one character i got annoyed with or tired of i wanted to see more of them like the first

ones you see is like a knight who's just a dorky dad and doesn't know what he's doing and you get to meet him and learn about his son and everything and like you can care or you can not care it's all up to you you're vibing with the story exactly i like the story a lot but the gameplay part of it you're making tea as they come in and ask for requests uh you'll have to grow plants to make the fruit to make the tea but like the plant growing is not the core of of the game it's not a day night cycle you're not like going out of your way and waiting a couple days for the carrots to grow so you can pull

them and plant more carrots it's like you plant the seeds in a specific arrangement in this sort of hexagonal grid on the ground uh and there you go now you've got it and the wander stop is in this big clearing you have a ton of space to plant stuff and get a little decorative um but the end point of the demo and the preview that i got a couple weeks ago uh i was expecting there to be some like big jump and there is and it's really beautiful and sad i don't want to say what it is because that's the one thing where i'm like so what are you doing most of the time because so there's the how much

of this is story beats how much like is each level a person you're talking to is each like how like you're the growing doesn't seem like it's a big part of it so like what are you actually doing moment to moment so yeah that's that's sort of i think what makes wander stop so interesting is that it's not one of those games It is very much a straightforward narrative focused thing where the growing the plants, the committing to people's orders, doing all of that stuff is straightforward and is something that you do almost to like progress the story.

So someone will have an order for a drink that they want and like the tea, they'll just say, I want tea that tastes like whatever, happy.

And you like, you go through your book, you have this book that has all of the different plants and all the different seeds and you can pick something out.

Sometimes it's specific and you have to sort of solve the puzzle for it, but it's, you know, I want mint.

look for the fruit that has mint in the description um and then you make it for them you give it to them some of them are a little more you can kind of give them whatever and see what happens which or at least that seemed that way anyways which is interesting and you can drink the tea on your own but yeah the moment to moment is more about story stuff it's more about i think interacting with these characters learning about alta and sort of like seeing the ways that people are affected because clearly the wander stop exists as this like i don't know landing space for people who have problems whether

that's personal or external uh every every single character you meet has their their own little weird quirk to them that makes them interesting not just because they're funny or or nice to be around but also because again it's another lens through i think uh seeing burnout seeing how characters deal with their own personal trauma or their own personal ways of recovering um and the one thing that you do every single time you make tea by the way i i love it it's so ridiculous but it's sort of the core of wander stop and i think the way that it achieves its ultimate goal of like telling a story about recovery

and how that becomes a part of your life and not something you do so you can get back to burning yourself out um making the tea in wander stop requires you to go to this big tea machine in the middle of the tea shop and you have to perform the same actions every single time you want to make the tea it's like if you like brew your own coffee you got to grind the beans and everything you know you got to go through the whole process um here you you climb up this like it's like a ghibli ass room you climb up the ladder you pull the thing the water goes in you hit the bellows like there's a whole process

to It's so it's very whimsical.

It was one of those whimsical games.

The music's done by C418, who did the music for Minecraft. So it has that same sort of feeling.

But yeah, the overall story of Wander Stop, I think what makes it work and also what I think makes it kind of hurt itself by the end is that it's, again, about this character, Alta, recovering from burnout and the ways that recovering from that is not like a thing you do for a little bit and then you're good again.

end right her her big issue is that she's ambitious overly ambitious to the point of it hurting her um and it's like this desire this spark in her that she doesn't want to lose is also the thing that's causing her to be in this spot so it's i think it's told in this very mature interesting way that like i i thought initially i was gonna finish it and be like yeah duh like i could have told you that's what this game was gonna be about from like the first five minutes it's but no it actually i think does a good job of presenting this story about this specific topic and again touching it from different

angles like going like they introduced they introduced one character who i think is like the perfect antithesis if like you're a young person who's like this what are you talking about did you get burnt out that's not even real there's a character you meet at a certain point he's very similar to alta he will walk you through it you will you'll understand your own hubris um but yeah it does so much more with the idea than i thought it would uh but then i also like i knew it was going to be it's it's you know it's one of the have you completed it yeah i've got to the end i finished it about 14 15

hours depends on how much you want to do side stuff how much you interact with the characters you want to burn out how much you want to burn out uh so so this is the point that i wanted to make and i was i was talking my wife i was like i hope danny's on the podcast because i think he'll have an interesting insight into this um i had to think perfect timing perfect time let me move it oh that's brilliant it's like i couldn't have rid it better than that um uh so hold on your pants for my shit opinion so okay wander stop again game of oprah but like the point that is made throughout most of your

play time is that you are reminded that there's nothing to do sometimes you are going to be bored all right on purpose it's intentionally boring uh at certain points you'll go and ask boro what what do I do now he's like Boro yeah Boro it's so good he's like Miss Molto I don't know do nothing sit down have fun drink tea do whatever you want but find you know you have to figure out how to have fun when you have nothing to do and so by the end of the game about 75 % of the way through when you figure out you know that's what this is about I'm not spoiling anything I'm just saying 75 % of the way through

I was like okay I get it like from that point on I was like yeah we're just I'm sort of just waiting for it to be over i get the point that it's trying to make and then you could argue this is a spoiler but it's i'm saying okay if you want to play this game skip ahead of a couple of minutes yeah like two minutes if if you're very very picky about spoilers at the end of the game near the end of the game you're suggested perhaps if you would like to spend some time just sitting around cleaning up cutting some vines sweeping up the leaves um i think if you're as a recommendation to sort of like make

boredom something that you look at positively to make tedium become something that you you uh appreciate my problem with that is or at least the the feeling that i had and the thing i'm curious about is like is is it wrong for me to because when i was playing i was like i shouldn't i go clean my own house i was i was like this tedium this desire for me to spend my time in the wander stop hanging out i was like no like i don't there was more story stuff it seemed like if i sort of hung out uh and did that but no i was like uh i mean if getting the point of this story i should turn the game off

and go do literally anything else so i was like i was a little i don't know i just by the end of it i was i was wondering yeah i don't know is that is that silly am i coming out of the wrong way or do you guys think could extend that logic to every game i guess i suppose that that was the real existential crisis i was having was why am i ever playing a video game i should be doing anything else yeah this sounds like a game that is like we're gonna there's gonna be some video essays about this one oh yeah i'm excited to they're all gonna have the same title too i guarantee it and it's hard for it's

hard for me to like sort of chip in on that having not played it because i feel like so much of the like you're describing this very well like i'm not sure but yeah everything i'm yeah you can only comment on my own perspective on it yeah and it's and it's and like I have a different yeah I have a I have a different relation this is gonna sound super like I'm fucking preaching or something but like a lot of this stuff goes out the fucking window once you have children like like how much time you have what you use it for and like what you're getting out of it and like your responsibilities like

that sort of gets solved for you in some way once you attach a being that will die unless you do those things it like sort of okay but you're also one of those just to be clear you got to do that for yourself yeah so that's a good point too yeah but like i guess the margins are so small that like i you know that and and also the thing that you also get is all of this other um like i don't know what you call it like and life force that you didn't get before because like there is a joy in you know it's like the the the you know the the monk who works away on a piece of wood all day and then a year

later they've made this incredible you know piece of art or whatever like you get that for free with a kid because you have have to do it but then you're getting all of the rewards all the time so like so much of my feeling with like boredom in particular is sort of out the window and has been for about six years now because like i just don't have to fill all those hours anymore if anything there aren't enough hours in the day um but i'm interested in the yeah the crunch stuff i think is obviously this is very very true within the games industry within just it's so difficult i mean you know jeremy

we can speak to this probably better than any of us in terms of just like the amount of work that needs to get put in to make anything in games and how much it like takes over your your mind and i've talked before about at least with videos they're done you know like i crunched hard on that half -life 2 thing when the secret a project and it was really hard but it was done and i couldn't patch it so at least there's that so i do yeah i wonder i'd be really interested to think what game developers think of this game i wonder if it like especially sort of speaks to them him I obviously didn't speak

about that in the trailer also which I thought was a wild way to do a launch date trailer uh about really just like chatting about yeah he was straight up like I wanted to make a cozy game because I thought it would help me recover and like get over my burnout wow projects and he was like no this that didn't help like I'm you know making this game didn't make me feel better uh it was a very raw but also if you played the beginner's guide a little weird uh weird hearing Davey Reed and say anything about anything about game development development um especially that raw but yeah no that is that is a really

good point that like i think when you reach a certain point you don't get to be you don't think you don't get to be but like you kind of can't relish in the burnout i feel like like you have the i'm not a parent but like you have that level of responsibility that you reach where you're like i have to i have to do this like it doesn't you know and part of me i think also when i got to the end of the game i was thinking like part of it is is like this almost seems like a hobby thing but it it is also a job thing too of like you know when you're low income like you know i grew up with my mother who like

worked her ass off to give us literally anything and all i could think was like man she went through that same thing and she didn't get to like make tea and feel better you know she didn't you don't get to recover when you're in a position where like you know you don't even like even making a cozy game for reading wasn't like really the solution to the problem so it's it's the way and i think this is what the story sort of boils down to is like you You can't boil it down to, I like it that I almost wrote that one down too.

Uh, it boils down to like, you can't just recover and start again.

You can't just like burnout is not a thing that you come back from and then intentionally burn yourself out again.

Right. You know what you did.

It takes something from you.

Yeah, absolutely. The way you're, yeah, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're ceiling or something.

It does. And you have to establish the brakes into your workflow.

like the only way you can be successful and creative and enjoy the work that you do i feel like anyway after a certain point is like you have to intentionally say i'm gonna stop for a little while yeah like you have to put those i mean you you know maybe better than the rest of us especially last year like if you don't implement those breaks man it's it's not exactly uh yeah so it's it's an interesting video game man i think it's one of those things where um it takes this team of people to make something that that i think is this profound and and so i mean everyone experiences it but just like

the way that read and writes and um that's sort of like self -aware but also not like isn't it funny how messed up things are like it's it's sincere and it's poking and prodding at very obvious things just the way that it's written is so so beautiful and yet so funny and silly and dumb is there voice acting in it or is it there is a little bit uh When Alta sits down to drink tea, that's all narrated, she sort of reads out her thoughts.

There's a little bit of a narrative thing that comes along with the voice acting, which I think is really interesting.

But for the most part, it's written, so you're just reading little blurbs from all the characters.

There's one thing I want to mention that is not a gameplay thing before I stop talking about this game.

There's a series of books that you can get from delivering letters, or from a book club, I think you just get it automatically, mathematically uh that are called called the uh the dirk warhard uh series of books they are is it like a duke nukem yeah it's like a comic book or something or it's no it's just a book of just i think it's i think it's there it might be dirk or dick i can't remember warhard um it's it's it's probably one of the funniest things i've ever read it's so it's so stupid yeah it's like a full it's like 10 pages or something 20 pages uh all the books that you can find but like

the the the way that it progresses that individual beat is so so funny it's like genuinely one of the funny there's a point where in the book the character just like makes people explode i don't know man it's so stupid i couldn't describe it just if you get a chance to play the game please do not pass on the books they are like the funniest funniest fucking books i've ever read exactly get dicked man oh man uh it's jeremy do you have any thoughts on this yeah um i deems rather it's it is a very interesting problem with uh so -called cozy games that like you get off working all day and you're like

i need to unwind let me play stardew valley and i feel like it's it's very odd in the abstract that the way that a lot of us unwind and blow off steam from work is to find sort of like fake work to do or like power wash simulator like the the popularity of you know it's like that meme of the the german guy who gets off work driving a forklift and goes to play like train simulator and it's i it's just it's such an odd thing that we do um and i feel like it's it's cool that someone is making a game that sort of interrogates that on some level because um you can't you can't work your way out of burnout

in some sense uh i mean you can sort of like task change like if you're burnt out on being a writer you know maybe becoming woofing and getting like an organic farming job for a year might be a way to like confront your burnout or whatever um but at the end of the day it's like it's inviting a reinvestigation of your relationship to work and i i think that a lot of what that entails is sort of re -establishing a relationship to non -work things um and i think it's really hard i mean people talk about like postpartum depression after they finish games or large projects um i there are a lot of people

who talk about this with building houses too people who build their own houses they'll like spend two years building a cabin right and then finish and move in and be like this is it this is the moment and then suddenly they're like my life is devoid of meaning like i don't have the the project anymore my grand quest is over yeah yeah for sure and it's it is such an interesting thing because it's like we work so hard because i think in moments where we're working that hard it's easy to like frame the the mythos of what we're doing is like and when i'm done i will reap the rewards of all of this it

will all be worth the suffering because in the end you know the suffering will yield fruit or whatever um but in some sense that's like that's kind of a lie we tell tell ourselves not because i mean there there is like you know you got to pay your rent and like whatever if you buy like a nice pc to game on and you got to get the money to do it it's like there are fruits to the labor or whatever um but in some sense i think the more important thing is establishing a relationship to meaningful work that is like sustainable in the sense that it is something that you that doesn't destroy you in the process

and sustainable also in the sense that when you that you are able to step away from the work um that like we we get better i i think it's like a cultural issue as well that we get better at like having sort of relationships to non -work things um someone i think who talks about this really well is uh uh the vietnamese buddhist monk thich nhat hanh wrote a lot about this um just ways of sort of like to sit right you got me onto that book yeah yeah and pieces every step is another really good one um thich nhat hanh is great for this isn't even like self -help literature or whatever this is just like

a legit ass buddhist monk who i mean like called one of the most religious men in history by martin luther king jr like a contemporary of mlk um yeah wrote a lot about sort of like learning to disengage and create like empty space in our lives and how important and healing that is and i think it is sort of a counterintuitive thing because i think that like i feel this in myself that there is like this constant urge to like i get off work and i i stand up and i stretch and i sit back down and i start doing game dev and it's like my way of unwinding is another form of productivity productivity and um

doing that constantly for the last few years has been illuminating in the way that it like it it destroys you in some sense like you really need to force yourself to do nothing um and i think that's yeah it's like a weird it's a weird sort of slippery thing to talk about because how do you like do nothing like how do you learn to do it's easy to learn to do things but it is very hard to like unlearn that doing is the way you get somewhere especially you're the type of like ocd anxious weirdos that we all are yeah totally fucking i can't just be with my thoughts no yeah like are you kidding me

that's what i pay spotify for that's what podcasts are for yeah to drown out the story for me um yeah the i the weirdest thing about it is that i think that um oh we're becoming the wander stop of podcast don't reverse reverse reverse we didn't say that keep listening keep listening things and if you truly enjoy this podcast you'll go outside right now um no i think the the weirdest thing about it is and i won't ramble on forever about fucking meditation whatever but the the strangest as someone who's been meditating for a really long time there i go through periods of my life where i don't meditate

for a long time and the hardest meditation session you'll ever have is when you haven't meditated either ever or in months or in years or whatever um and so i I think that like, it is that, that resistance, that like friction of just sitting and being quiet for 10 minutes is, is the most difficult when you start trying to build that habit, like building any habit.

Um, but I think because it's sort of like a, it's a negation of productivity rather than like, uh, it's my first time working out and then you like work out and you're done with it and you're like, I felt good.

It'll be easier next time.

It feels way more difficult to just like sit with your thoughts and tell yourself it'll be easier next time.

Um, because because if you're not building something you're like on you're deconstructing something uh and so i think that like yeah just like learning to to recognize that as a a practice that's worth doing uh is it is important because i think it's it's very easy to like destroy yourself with productivity without realizing it and that can also take the form of being productive as a form of leisure i think there's i don't i don't get i don't want to get too gendered about this But I do think there is a challenge as well with like the male brain as a sort of I feel like the women in my life have more

natural connections to like other things in their lives that give them satisfaction or place.

and in a way I feel like a lot of men have this relationship with achievement for validation that like we are sort of society sort of views us as like good or bad based on how much we've achieved like I'm sure that is also the case for everyone but it's something I've always I've tried to tackle with over the past couple of years not necessarily myself but when I look at like young angry men on the internet like and and sort of what they're up against and And I think as it's specifically like life has gotten harder for people when it comes to like getting jobs that they're satisfied with, or being able

to like, you know, house themselves or kind of do anything.

Um, and I feel like there is this sort of thing.

I see this relationship with work and self -worth and stuff is something that at least, and again, this might just be my my perspective as somebody, you know, from my age and my gender and everything.

But I do see it as something that men struggle with more.

I think women struggle probably more in like getting validated within workplaces.

I don't, I'm not saying that I'm saying like sort of self -worth and stuff like that.

I, I, I see this like sort of toxic connection that kind of exists there.

and it's really hard to get away from in in modern society because so much of who we are and what we do is based on you know our place in the world and the work that we do and you know how how much money we earn and where we live and all this sort of stuff like there's all these signifiers that sort of emerge um from that and so i think that it's it's really difficult and like guilt it like it makes people feel guilty to step away from their their responsibilities there's this great like I forget it was it was like a tweet or a reddit post I saw ages ago which was like so insightful into like

how I think like boyfriend's brains work if this makes sense or like male brains work it was a it was a it was in like a women's advice reddit or something and they were talking about she was talking about how she sends her husband on quests that like all men want are fucking quests like they don't want to like if you don't ask them if they want if they can go go get you a coffee to say like do you mind getting me a coffee because to the male brain and again sorry i'm getting very gendered when i'm saying shit like that so i'm not gonna be a phrenologist by the end of this podcast but like to

like it's like they don't want to like have to guess whether or not you want something they just want to know that if they do the thing they'll get the reward if i get you a coffee you'll appreciate it you know what i mean you like me you'll love me you'll be my partner you'll be i'm like i was thinking about that and that's definitely how my brain works where i'm like oh input output i need to be like put this much work in so i get this much money and i need to do this so i get this much and then i need to spend this much time with my family so i get this much love and i think that's the power

fantasy that cozy games tend to feed into also it's like yes you know when you're farming like you water the plants you get a plant you don't have to like worry about bugs eating your plants some games you do like yeah there's exactly there's never a famine it's never too hot it's never too wet it's always exactly right uh you always get something out you give someone a gift and now your love meter has gone up and like stardew or whatever right you always that's the power fantasy of those games is it's not that you get to be the ultimate warrior who blasts everyone down with your big huge guns

it's like no i i get to i do something there's no politics there's no oh they change the laws here and now i have to grow 400 chickens i don't like or whatever i don't get hungry i don't get distracted like power wash simulator like it's just like this never run out out of water no what if i could work forever and never take a lunch break all the energy you don't ache exactly yeah yeah there's none of those barriers that exist in in real life yeah yeah it's this is something i've been thinking a lot about recently because i fucking dan you mentioned this earlier but i i struggle really bad with ocd

and sometimes it's like totally fine especially when i'm like on the road and camping i never notice it but when i'm home and working and like in my normal routine it gets really bad sometimes um and something that kind of clicked for me recently is that uh that that feeling okay with uncertainty is sort of like a weird sort of core issue that leads to my ocd and whether that's like you know checking the gas knobs on the stove before i go to bed where it's like it's very easy to be like well yeah how could i be okay with uncertainty if i could explode in the night like it's very easy to talk yourself

out of that but i think that a huge part of the core of that is is learning to be okay with uncertainty and i think that that is sort of it's like a weird sort of insidious underbelly of cozy games is that i think that they are a a place a an experiential space in which you can exist and have those factors of uncertainty removed from the act of doing and yielding things it's like a safe space for your for to to work within yeah like i'm totally like yesterday right yesterday i had a lot going on this week editing stuff gdc is on all this stuff's going on we have a bunch of these goats right and they're

like they're pretty young so i'm like bottle feeding them and making sure they're all right and all this sort of stuff and one of them has um like a little infection on the top of her head where they disbutted her so they sort of burned the the um horns off you know before we adopted adopted them or whatever and it was like all getting all puss pussed up and i knew i had to bring these things out to like vacaville so it's like a like a hour and 20 minute drive out to get their second shots later on this week so i texted the lady and i'm like she's got a little bit of infection above and then suddenly

it's like one of those quests it's like i'm minding these goats and i'm making sure they're okay and i'm getting this like this great like feedback from them but now it's become because of probably my anxiety now it's like a problem that i need to fix like i need to fix this so that the the the kid is okay but i but also this is clearly something something for me.

So I don't have to spend the next week before I go out to her again for the shots to like get this done.

So I like text her and was like, can you do it today?

And she was like, yeah.

And I loaded them all up in the car and drove out.

And that that's a really good example of like what you're talking about.

We're like, that's what life is.

Life is shit happens and you have to react.

And I think people who have like anxiety and OCD probably are worse at, I could have just probably, she would have been fine.

I could have brought her out next week or late this week but the way my brain works I just I couldn't I like I was like can we do it now can we just you know I need to like I need to solve this problem for myself kind of immediately and you're right like that those types of things don't happen in kind of any game all right they're all closed systems I mean some games they do online games are like this is why I can't play Tarkov because that's what that game is it's just like shit going wrong that you didn't see coming the video game and i'm like that's the opposite that's the opposite of what i

want to do um so yeah it's i think you're totally right like there is something about like power wash why do people play power simulator and not power wash their house i guess it's a waste of fucking water for one but it's but it's it's probably because yeah it's like a closed system what could go wrong um whereas like in power in real life you might have left a window open you didn't realize and then you come in after washing your house and your fucking living room soaked or you know all these things yeah yeah it is it is a bizarre sort of i mean that's why wanderstop is interesting to me is because it's

it is a cozy game that is directly trying to it's because they're you see sort of cozy games emerging now they're like oh it's a cozy game where you're farming but someone is a murderer in the town and it's like murder farm 2025 that's like a cool subversion of the cozy sim but i think wanderstub is attempting sort of the more interesting um like future version of what a cozy game can be which is you know are cozy games good is is this a good is this a force for good in in the culture of games is this something that is like actually relaxing people and giving them an outlet or is it sort of you

know opiating them in some sense to be clear the game is not attacking that it's not like it gives you the opportunity and i think is bringing on the conversation to think about that sort of thing but it is not like at no point does a character turn to you and go like you're bored aren't you don't don't you think you should be cleaning your home but still but you you making the you positing the question is sort of that means that it did exactly the fact that you're thinking about it means it did its job that's exactly it's not trying to preach to you it sounds like no it's not very not prescriptive

it did not go like hey this is how you solve your burnout it was just like man try being with yourself for a little bit more you know of your life i the one other thing i want to say this game i've read so many reviews it's so interesting i don't agree with any of them and i agree with all of them at the same time it is like the weirdest game to criticize because everything you say about it that's negative is sort of the point it's like yeah it's like it's immune to criticism because Because if you get it, then you wouldn't hate it.

And if you don't get it, then yeah, okay.

That means that once you play the game, it's really, really good.

I can't believe people who make great video games keep making great video games.

What a shocker. Wonder Store, $25 on Steam.

It's only on Steam, right?

No, isn't it on other platforms?

It's on other stuff?

I could have swore.

I was looking it up.

I think you get the Platinum Trophy just by completing the story.

Oh, the trophies too are really weird. I don't know how it works on PlayStation, but on Steam, the the achievements you get are nuts i will read an earlier one that is not that sounds very on theme yeah absolutely but as you're doing random things and you know walking around planting plants and doing your thing uh you get an achievement titled uh what is needed he who is drawn simply to what is needed to what is not realized and the picture is a fire like what okay every achievement from a book i think it's the title of a book do you know what it might be as well is that like They probably didn't

want to put trophies in, but you need to if you're publishing on those consoles.

So the Steam ones might be copies of them.

So maybe that's what they're doing.

They're sort of like, OK, well, we need to do it, but we don't really want to do it.

Kind of defeats the point.

More esoteric Steam awards, I would say.

I think Steam achievements that are just like you got in touch with your inner child and it doesn't say anything further.

Wander Stop, Street Fighter 6, and then the rest of video games.

bring back more ones like that naruto game where you get you know what was it that you had avatar avatar the 200 gamer score points you weren't here we joked about that you weren't here wait on this podcast yes today earlier yeah that's what you guys are talking about the avatar do you remember that thing where we passed oh no that was on citizen game we we had a copy of that game and we did a thing we called past the points where we mailed a copy of that avatar game to people and then they could like get all 200 000 points and then they had to mail it to somebody else and we got like maybe five

or six people before we're missing that's awesome go play that that king kong good times wonderstar let's go for the biggest um sort of uh tonal shift we can frank wwe 2k25 five how does this make you want to go outside this is no well yeah makes him want to go to japan i have i have seven wrestling shows i'm going to next month in vegas what wait seven in vegas guys wrestlemania weekend whatever city it takes place in every single year it turns into mania weekend so every single wrestler is in town because there's wrestlemania but it also means there's a hundred thousand wrestling fans in the weekend

so every promotion every indie promotion Japanese promotions fly all their wrestlers in and it is just like five days of non -stop wrestling shows so what are you doing what's on your hit list alright so oh my god oh my god okay I literally collapsed to my I was in a Japanese bookstore in Little Tokyo on Saturday and I collapsed to my knees because I I'm not kidding no I believe you because I set up a Twitter alert for the Twitter account Spark Joshi Proresu which is like one of the indie women's Japanese wrestling promotions here based in America so So they announced a meet -and -greet with Starlight

Kid of Stardom. I've gone to Japan three times.

I've seen Starlight Kid live, but meeting Stardom wrestlers is nearly impossible because they are the top company, so it's so difficult.

But they're coming to America, and I have meet -and -greet, whatever.

So I'm so excited. So Wednesday, I'm driving out to Vegas.

That night, there's Dragon Gate USA, which is a Japanese promotion founded by Ultimo Dragon.

They're hosting a show at the Palms Resort.

And at that show, Starlight Kid and Izumi will be there.

in addition to many other wrestlers the next day I'm going to start them at 12 p .m. Spark Joshi put a rest at 5 p .m. at 11 p .m. is marvelous oh my god three in one day yes which is Shigusa Nagoya's promotion uh she was the crush gals in the 80s then next day is Tokyo Joshi put wrestling at 11 a .m. at the Palms Resort that's uh Friday and then Friday night is Joey Janela's spring break which is gonna have Sabu's retirement match oh wow yeah yeah I don't know a video game podcast we gotta put you on something we gotta get a wrestling cast yeah sabu is now uh he was born in 64 60 yep yep so it's

his retirement match and then uh hope he makes it right like that unlike that darren aronofsky movie all right like he is spoilers yeah i mean he'll probably go through a table one last time and then that will be it it might be the last time he goes through anything like undertaker just straight into the ground you know what i mean just like yeah boom uh and then uh and then the day after that show saturday which i think will be my last one is tokyo joshua wrestling versus gcw so that's where they have all their yeah all the american wrestlers versus the tokyo joshua pro so you're not going to

mania no that's amazing i love that that's brilliant that is absolutely brilliant also the stardom event has the coolest name i have ever seen american dream 2025 in sin city yeah yeah that is wow terrific what a strong そうですね so i was i was joking my friends yesterday where it's like oh this is great vegas is going to turn to tokyo because i gotta go to seven wrestling shows for the weekend dude there's so many i'm on i'm on like a wrestling there's like a tna one there's prestige there's a bunch of other ones there's also ones that i don't think i feel comfortable reading out mike have you heard

of micromania oh yeah yeah yeah okay yeah yeah so you can imagine what that that is um uh yeah so there's a yeah that's that sounds great anyway let's talk about not any of the ones you're excited to go to let's talk about the big boring big box disney version of wrestling yes world wrestling entertainment uh you know owned and operated by our favorite minister of education or whatever the fuck oh my god you're right oh so weird like what the carneys are running that's out of the city what's happening that doesn't work the prime minister of canada is Mark Carney you can't make that joke yes sorry

go on great so uh yeah so WWE 2k25 is out um the big thing that happened it was like I completely tuned out of even wrestling talking about burnout I tuned out of wrestling like I was super into wrestling from like the n64 video games through like the smackdown ps2 games which were phenomenal by the 360 era I just stopped watching wrestling because that's when they were making it very pg John Cena was the top of the company it was like Like, OK, whatever.

And then and every now and then, every few years, my friends and I were like, oh, let's get the new 2K.

Let's try the new wrestling game.

And they always kind of suck.

Like they just weren't for me at some point.

Like the 2K brand took over and they made a more like sports sim as opposed to like arcade fighting games.

And so I remember playing 2K16 and finding it really sluggish and just not fun.

And then so I just didn't bother.

I remember 2K20 came out and no one let not even like the hardcore WBE fans.

fans it was such a like i mean i think it also released during covet so i don't know but no one liked that game it was so bad that it forced it forced them to take a year off right so they didn't make 2k 21 um but even i ignored it it wasn't until uh you know literally like two months ago when i was like oh man i can't get enough of wcw i'm reading brett hart's book let me try 2k24 and oh my god you know they've been slowly iterating this game but like the 2k series i I think they started like 2K since like 2K13.

So, I don't know. After 11 of these games, guys, this game is really fun.

Hooray! I can't believe it.

Shout -outs to Novato's own visual concepts.

They figured it out.

They did it. Great job.

I'm blown away. And even from like 2K24, which I played a lot of, 2K25, the current one, this is on, yeah, PS5, Xbox Series X.

If you're playing it on PC, they consider that a last -gen version, so it's stripped down.

Oh, okay. Like the Switch version, it's more like?

Yeah. it has parity with ps4 and xbox that's why all the all the steam reviews are like what the what yeah so but i'm playing on ps5 um it's really fun this game has so many modes and so it's like pick your pick your pick your poison pick what you want um the thing that i fell in love with this is so dumb but it's called my faction it is uh the way you play it's like you play your game and you're building your own faction and you you gain your roster by collecting cards so this is it's It's very, like, gotcha.

Like, you do missions, and oh, god, you got a card pack.

Who are you going to get?

Oh, my god, you got Dominic Mysterio.

Whatever. It's stuff like that.

But we talked about.

Wait, is Dominic Mysterio Rey Mysterio's son?

Yes. And he is actually, like, he's in the company prominently.

And so. 619, baby. Every time you play, you're getting, like, the digital currency, whatever.

But there's all these, again, it's the input output.

You're getting these objectives.

And so you're constantly unlocking more wrestlers.

And there's so much fan service in this game.

So it's like, oh, John Cena, 2002, whatever.

And their specific outfit from one pay -per -view they wore 25 years ago.

So it's just like you can unlock Bret Hart in here.

You have all these WCW registers.

Is there like a paid currency that you can?

Oh, yeah. I was wondering why they were doing this.

But easily, if you play the game, you do not have to spend any money on it.

And so it's like, yeah, because I could do that.

But then if I buy the card, then there's no reason to play.

Because also, you don't have to do this mode.

you can just go play a what you know custom match do whatever and and do that but it's like oh there's a there's like i said the quest oh my god you're you're building the faction there's all these things to unlock but it it's almost like kind of like playing nba street or something where there there's a thing in it called world tour mode and it's like all right philadelphia and it's like a little cartoon of paul heyman like think you're the most extreme wrestler see if you can win these five table matches we'll give you a card pack if you can't whatever really yeah yeah yeah it's it's great so it's

like it feels like a 2002 like ps2 arcade game where it's like yeah it's actually like oh this is really fun um and in different matches on different stipulation where it's like you can only use bronze card wrestlers for this one so you have to like oh that's great but but so it comes dominic mysterio yeah so it forces you to use wrestlers you normally wouldn't and like there's a daily live event so it's like oh today's iron and sheik's birthday if you can beat him in a submission match you'll get a card pack i hope you're i hope you're fighting hulk hogan in that one oh so so there are yeah there

oh yeah yeah i kill you yeah yeah the the fuck the hogan um but hulk hogan's in this game and and but nwo hogan's in this game there's razor abone there's nwo scott hall so it's like there's so much fan service in these and like you can and that's the nice thing is you can tell the people making the game they are also wrestling fans and i know wwe has so much creative control everything but it's like Like, oh, it's good.

It's really, really pleasant.

Old wrestlers in it?

I see the trailer here has – I think that's Yokozuna, is it?

Yeah, yeah. So the big feature – that's my faction moon.

And there's a – yeah, big – oh, my God.

Bret Hart's book has so much – he just talks shit on every single wrestler ever.

Reading Bret Hart's book taught me so much about Yokozuna.

Whatever. Oh, is Yokozuna shithead?

No, but it's – well, it's like when he was – because he was a Samoan, him but he was billed as a Japanese he was billed from Japan so when he went to Japan nobody liked like the Japanese and they were like Yokozuna seen as the high rank of sumo but he played it as a heel and Japanese audiences are like no that's an honorable thing what are you doing so the wrestlers would be so stiff with it whatever so oh funny but the big that's why Rikishi was the way he was yeah we're gonna avoid that one yep and Rikishi's so it's funny you can play as like young Rikishi she in this so the big the big every

uh rest every 2k game the wb2k games has like what they call their showcase mode so it's like uh and i feel like in years past they're like oh john's seen a showcase you're gonna go through every big match i've seen his career last year which i talked about the podcast like a few months ago was like the road to wrestlemania here's all these big wrestlemania matches this year it's the bloodline and you have paul heyman it is he's literally talking to the camera there's an opening line that's like and now today you the expert gamer of the WWE universe are going to play through the bloodline and it's

like wait is it just him yes like fmv and yes it feels like a sega fmv game paul heyman's sitting there with a puka shell necklace and it's like are you ready to step into the ring as roman reigns your tribal chief and the island of relevance it's like this is awesome like paul heyman is the greatest salesman in wrestling he's so it's it's so the the bloodline is you're going through all the there's like three Samoan families.

They're all related, like, you know, The Rock's a part of it, Roman Reigns, Yokozuna, all these wrestlers.

And you're playing through all their matches, but they tell you, like, here's the, this is what was happening wrestling in 1993, and they use archival footage, and it's like, oh, this is, it's an interactive documentary, and it's hosted by Paul Heyman.

It's like, this is amazing.

So, it's really, really cool.

And if you play the showcase mode, you unlock those wrestlers to use, and you're my faction.

So, you unlock a Rikishi card, whatever.

so it's it's generally cool then there is the my rise which is the story mode which is so cheesy but what makes it cool is you can use custom wrestlers in it so the the big thing i love with these games every year is just diving into the community creations so like day one the game had like a 100 they had like the premium deluxe seven day early edition oh yeah yeah i held off sickos got it early yep and so so that freaks right so they could start grinding they're my factions so so they can have a leg up in the ranked matches, whatever.

So, day one, you search creative, custom creative, creative comedy, whatever, community creations.

Custom content community creations.

I think we broke Frank.

No, I'm so excited.

No, it's great. I genuinely love this game.

It's great. I've been playing these WWE 2K games nonstop for the last month while reading the Bret Hart book, while listening to the Nitro audiobook, while booking wrestling shows, while also going to wrestling shows in LA.

It's like, this is, it's 24 -7.

WWE, yeah, whatever.

dude you gotta meditate on wrestling you gotta slow down burn out no yeah uh again i'm gonna meet starlight kid in a month this is it i'm like you know uh so uh um all right so uh custom content community creations day one there's already people making stardom characters there's already people making wcw characters so i you i've downloaded mina shirakawa from stardom i downloaded steve mongo mcmichael from 1997 wcw and they are my main characters in the my rise story mode and it's like there's these cut scenes and they have feels like tony hawk where it's like you have the wrestlers doing their

voice acting and it's like hi i'm cm punk nice to see you like it doesn't say the name but it's like great voice acting that's how it is it's very like it's very like ps2 it's very like one line they did one take hey triple h nice to meet you to the company it's like so like oh it's like like low effort but that's why it's so funny uh but they They actually got the wrestlers, and so I don't know.

So it's just so fun seeing the, like, going through these story modes, and it's filled with fan service, and it's so cheesy, and that's what wrestling is, is it's cheesy, and like, I don't know.

So that's the story mode.

That's great, and if you beat the story mode, you unlock cards to use in my faction.

So every mode speaks to one another, and it's just, there's so much stuff to get in here, and what I'm excited about is, like, starting this game at the beginning of the year, and it's like, every week, there's new matches to get to unlock more things, and they're gonna be updating stuff, and like, uh, there's already DLC stuff planned.

New Jack will be a DL seaker which no one thought would happen because he literally tried to kill people in the wrestling ring but who's the most problematic wrestler that's in it at the moment I see China's in here oh yeah Hulk Hogan yeah okay but yeah no Chris Benoit he's not made it back in no but there are WCW or there are like whatever the community just don't it's okay it's alright we got it yeah yeah hey Frank what do you call the area where people can upload their own characters what's that called community creations yes uh yeah so but and then even on twitter i felt i follow a twitter

account called wcw rewind which is like a group of people who are just making wcw created characters uh i felt i found a guy in japan who is making the entire new japan pro wrestling roster and uploading it so it's like so if you're it doesn't matter like even if you don't like spongebob or bender or any other all the weird stuff is in there like i mean the cost the costco dad is in there the rizzler like people so like any aw wrestler you want is in there and you can oh is that is that is that dude who the tiktok guy who jumps who fuck this shit who jumps on stuff super yeah he made his own i

don't know if he uploaded his own but people are yeah people are making superhuman but i want to have him fight doink the clown yes yes yes so doink is officially in the thing i think but uh yeah people will probably make you superhuman but violent jay and shaggy too dope were already like custom uploaded so that yeah it's like and every week there'll be more and more the one thing that's again crazy is because they considered pc last gen pc is not in the in the in the creative content pool as xbox and ps5 so it sounds like all the real good stuff is ps5 and xbox if you're on pc you're being shared

with ps4 and xbox one or whatever the hell they call that um so i don't know so i feel bad if you're on pc because it didn't used to be like that used to have parody with all so that's like the big major red flag but i'm playing on ps5 i love it the game is really good and the like last thing there's other modes i'm not talking about there's like a custom like they call it my gm mode which is like fan you get a fantasy book your own promotion it's all like budget spreadsheets and stuff oh my god but it you know there um but and there's online mode but playing online wrestling games is just gonna make

me hate whoever yeah yeah that's not because it comes it comes down to specific reversal window timings and that's not fun Winning is not the point.

And then in the MyFaction mode, there's a thing called Faction Wars, which turns your thing into like a roguelike.

So like as you beat matches, you get like stat boosts, you get armor, you get like all these things.

You unlock wrestlers you can use in your run.

They literally call it Faction Run.

And like that's how you can earn even more digital currency to unlock characters.

Because I'm trying to grind and unlock Bret Hart because he's 40 ,000 whatever MyFaction points, but I will get him soon enough.

But so yeah, this game is so, this game is so, so fun if you're a wrestling fan.

The actual combat, it's fast, it's fun.

There's, like, a really fun rhythm to it.

There is a lot of, like, reversal input timings.

There's rhythm games when you get pinned.

You have to, like, tap up on the right thumbstick to escape the pin.

Submission. It's, like, it's really fun.

Again, they've been practicing and entering this every single year.

And, yeah, 2K25 hits the sweet spot for me.

I think, again, like Burnout, if you haven't played these games in years, oh, my God, it's fun to dive into it.

So I really recommend it.

And if you're on the fence, they do this like clockwork.

during wrestlemania weekend the game will be like 25 off so if you want to wait like a month then it'll be like it'll be like at least 10 bucks off and but they do it every that's what i would always do with these is i would wait till wrestlemania weekend and they get it discounted but i am so excited that i i dove in now but oh and then the big feature they finally have intergender wrestling so you can finally have yeah men and women wrestlers together and so you can literally do whatever custom thing you want they never didn't have that they didn't even any of like tag team or or they had a weird

tag thing mode where it's like if once the woman wrestler was tagged in the male ai had to immediately tag in you could not do in between now as even part of the story mode like the story mode is very much like all right you guys gonna be the the first intergender tag team champion whatever so it's like they're very much putting that feature in your face but it's great because like if you want to do silly custom matches now you can just do whatever and then again it's there is also in the game not custom there is is cork and hall is in the game they call it japan hall but that's that's the wrestling

venue in tokyo that i'm obsessed with so it's like japan hall is in the game and it's like oh my god they actually so just the fact that that's in their shows that like oh the people making this actually care about wrestling so very very delighted by this game awesome stuff ww2k 25 maybe pass on the pc version but what were you playing ps5 yeah ps5 ps5 wow i take the chivos gotta get the the trophy frank frank doesn't play unless it's game pass he's like i must spend the money over there yeah that's why microsoft are in so much trouble yeah maybe um jeremy you played uh a very man we have a real

this is a real if you wanted to understand what this podcast is like and everyone's tastes so this is the episode this was the archetypal episode yeah yes um should i read the title you introduced this this is on yeah this is on you this is on you you've made this bed don't lie in it uh i played a game by a developer named uh it's natalie lawhead i hope it's pronounced natalie it has a th in there so apologies if it's natalie but i think it's natalie lawhead who goes by the name uh alien melon and this this game is called uh individualism in the dead internet age an anti -big tech asset flip shovelware rant

manifesto uh and rant is crossed crossed out it started as a rant and it became a manifesto um this is a uh i don't know this is like a playable essay i would say this is a is really interesting sort of use of the of of the medium of games to do something that is distinctly non -gamey but very much about games this is sort of like a a meta a meta game about games um it does a lot of really interesting things i'm not not going to talk too deeply about it because it's very short it's like 30 minutes or whatever so i want to talk about sort of like top level reasons why i think it's interesting and not spoil

too much how do you play it i guess yes so this is a first person sort of like environments that you walk through uh one of the most interesting things i read an interview with the developer and one of the most interesting things i think about this is that this game is very much about um where like personal computing was decades ago and where it is now and sort of the trajectory from this very like utopian sort of like open -ended hopeful yes exactly like anyone can make software you can do it at home on your computer they used to send out like uh like computing magazines used to have like code

in them that you could just copy line for line and be like now you can play like you can make galaga on your own computer for free and uh and it was just this sort of like infinite potential horizon of like computing is is the future and anyone can do it it's egalitarian and then the game sort of draws this arc from that to now which is like it's you know all there's all these like creative suites of software that are subscription based it's expensive there are a lot of sort of like a gatekeeping measures in place that make it more difficult to share um back in the day you know there i was thinking

about the heroes of might and magic video we did and how john van canningham made uh his early games and then just like put it in like an apple computing magazine right and was like i'll mail you a floppy disc yeah yeah and he did it himself or like um uh richard garriott when he did a calabeth uh his early dungeon crawler um was like i think he was like 19 or 21 or something sold it to game stores did he or something he sold so the his the store he worked at let him sell copies of the game at uh at and if you've never seen the physical version of a calabeth it is like it isn't it is an aesthetic

that is so uh absent from games now where it's like I don't know it looks like something like if if J .R .R.

Tolkien was like a homeless guy or something like it's like it's so like crunchy and textured and like homebrewed it's so cool um and it's very like DIY and sort of like punk rock software uh but anyway um so you know this game is essentially about how we got from there to here and it's a game made by someone who has been doing software as an art form for a very long time um and they illustrate with a lot of personal examples but also there are like as you work through this you'll walk up to these big sort of like art installations like these big like uh like screens and weird props and stuff

and if you interact with them it will open links on your browser for like real world sources oh crazy so like you'll go up and yeah and you mentioned this is like video or essay is there voiceover or is it text oh there is wow okay hilariously there There are sort of, like, little, like, coin pickups on the ground that are sometimes different shapes.

And when you walk over them, there will be, like, a very sort of Microsoft Sam voice that's, like, in the old internet.

That's sort of like RFK.

It's not like Microsoft Sam.

I mean. But, yeah. So, it's sort of, like, yeah, narrated, but go at your own speed.

So, you can kind of resume the narration by moving forward. or you can if you see something that interests you you can click on it and then be taken to you know articles old news articles and things like that to learn sort of more so it's a yeah it's sort of like an a la carte however deep you want to go you can go deeper or less deep um but uh but i i think sort of like one of the the most illustrative examples i think for me was the this developer was talking about making sort of like anti -productivity software and i thought that was such a hilarious like a way to illustrate this issue and they

gave a couple examples of um that they had made this zine maker software back in the day that a lot of people had resonated with that was it it wasn't like efficiency software where it was like here's the clean template and like everything lines up perfectly it was like zine making software where the text lines were like off -center and crooked and like everything was so fucked up but it like the software itself had texture and i think that uh as as history has progressed i i think that there is more of a push to have tools be um a transparent window that like the another example to give is kid

pics like a lot of people remember kid pics not because it was photoshop because it was like amazing for making like whatever masterpieces but because it had its own characteristics its own flavor its own texture and um and sometimes those things that are weird and nuancy and rough around the edges aren't hindrances to the end goal of what the software is for they are the like flavor it's like mono software now where like there is one software for doing video there is one software for making pictures there is one software for compressing files whereas back or playing music or whereas back then

there was like fucking so there was so many rushing to market that you had all this weird like little pockets that they were sort of like filling in here and there or whatever you know yeah yeah another example they gave of a piece of software that they made was this thing i think it was called electric file monitor and it would randomly randomly accused files on your computer of being viruses and it would put them in virus jail and it would say like this document is of is potentially a virus we flagged it as potentially a virus but it was just completely random and you would have to let the files

out of virus jail and it's like it's just so fucking it's it's it's like software as a form of personal expression not just as a um as like a tool for getting things done i mean this ties into what we're we're talking about with productivity and like wander stop and stuff it's like there is a relationship to art that i think can very easily slip into like you know you might as well just be like mail it like faxing out like the files and reports and stuff like it's like if you're just going through the motions it loses some of the magic that is the reason that people get into like creating things

in the first place i even find it with patreon that like patreon is such a it's it's a such a hands -off slick utility for me to like basically get money from strangers that like if you let that just be the case it can actually be like very alienating whereas like i want to know the people without getting parasocial about it like i like knowing the interests and thoughts of the people but there's because because there's no friction anywhere you don't you don't create the moments to do that so you have to like instigate the moments to do that like like make a discord and hang out with people or do

you know what i mean it's it's weird how yeah there's all these byproducts that you get for free sometimes when there's all when there's a bit of friction between the software but but you kind of when you miss those you don't miss them because it's annoying sometimes to have to jump through hoops or fix that or do this and do that and there's lots of like you know i don't miss making websites on dreamweaver you know what i mean like like i'm glad that things have gotten better but yeah because there's this lack of friction and and thought you sort of yeah you lose something in that exchange or you

know this an element of in culture or something that's gone that doesn't exist anymore which is why like 10 years ago the internet feels like the same as now you know i mean it whereas when you go back then it's like it felt like a whole felt like the internet had wallpaper or something or had a smell yeah you know totally that that's a great way of putting it it's like um you know in our in our quest to optimize our lives we have lost something along the way that maybe we didn't know we had in the first place where like if you you know if you can go to safeway and get tomatoes at one in the morning

because you want tomatoes at one in the morning that's great and like that's that is a personal freedom that we value but lost somewhere along the way was the relationship you had to like tomato guy yeah uh you know and it's like maybe it it was fucking annoying because like tomato guys like yeah i'm like going to visit my parents today you're like bro i need tomatoes today it's one um like come on and it's one stop calling me at one a .m. okay if you need a big lasagna fucking just let me know ahead of time um but yeah but you're like losing the the relationship you have to the people who make

things and yeah i think it's it's illustrative of a similar thing where in our quest to uh to optimize and sand off rough edges and and make everything sleek and efficient um we've lost some of what makes those things special so uh yeah it's a it's a really interesting game experience uh one of the things that i thought was really cool about it that i started talking about this earlier and i cut myself off was um the whole thing is made with very high fidelity assets yeah i was about to say this does not like the way you're the way i would expect a indie game of this nature to be would be like

not this This game looks like it's made in Unreal or something.

Yes. So that was an intentional choice by the developer.

I looked at it a little bit.

I didn't want to spoil it.

I wanted to have my own interpretation, but I wanted to look a little into the person who made this.

And one of the things that they referenced was that the idea of using Unreal Asset Store high -fidelity assets is sort of in the way that a lot of AAA games will watch what indie games do and sort of co -opt their ideas into mass -market ideas.

ideas um this developer wanted to take these like high fidelity triple -a assets and co -opt them into like a punk rock subversive diy game and i think that that's really funny because i think we inherently think about like jank and low poly as sort of punk rock and gorilla and diy but but the idea of having there's one part where there's just like a giant fucking razor mouse that's like insanely high poly and you can just like jump up on it and walk around and i was like this is so funny because it's like right it's like uh it's like making fun of those things or something yeah it's saying like

does this does this make you feel anything look how fucking many fucking triangles were in this mouse does that make you feel anything um and a little bit i do like the mouse i do like the big toy mouse um but uh the other thing that's interesting about i mean there's a million things that are interesting but the last thing i'll mention is is that this game is not on Steam.

Okay, yeah. Oh well, all right, I'm not playing it anymore.

Game Pass or... It's not on Steam.

And the fact that it's not on Steam is referenced in the game because this game contains things that literally the message that this developer got from Steam rejecting it for Steam application is screenshotted in the game itself as a way of talking about this gatekeeping that goes on, essentially.

officially because the game contains screenshots of like valve ip in an attempt to make commentary on it and valve is like well you can't just like have portal in your game that's not portal use non -existent video game yeah so you see some of the stuff that's on the steam store and you're not letting it on because there's a picture of like fucking wheatley in it like what are you talking about so it gets into some really interesting discussions about games and gatekeeping and sort of like uh corporate gatekeepers for art mediums and what it means to have these you know it's very convenient to

have steam but they and maybe they should take less than 30 percent from smaller games and maybe they should let like weirder fucking shit out there so uh yeah i don't know it's a really interesting game about games and i highly recommend it individualism in the dead internet age by alien melon on itch available on itch there you go jesse you'll do the work you'll get the pay yeah pay what you want pay what you want very cool throw the developers i don't think i've ever downloaded any for free with pay you what you want i'm always like oh man gotta give him a dollar gotta get a dollar i usually

i like five but i'm a i'm a i have such guilt with tipping though i over tip but that's not me like i'm such a cool guy i have like it's like a problem i have where i need to like stop doing this shit i'm wasting patrons money here i need to yeah yeah well that's all right i think it's going to go into a good place if it's i think the patrons would want it to go to you know like independent you don't know what he's tipping man You're not saying where that money's going.

Independent alcohol servers.

Various gentleman's clubs, I'm sure.

Yeah, exactly. You can buy your fez, but we know it's real.

Instead of $1, I do $2.

I get them especially from the bank.

I throw Sacagawea coins up on stage.

I've got the ones with Ronald Reagan on them up here.

Quick breaking news.

Assassin's Creed Shadows reviews have been coming in as we've been live.

Who cares? Just kidding.

It's reviewing remarkably well.

Can we all guess the number?

That's cool. I don't look at Metacritic because it sucks.

We used to work with Metacritic and fuck all that shit.

Lots of 8, 9s, 10s, some other ones as well.

But it seems people are saying it's kind of like a like a much -needed high point for the series like it's it's they've been trending in this direction it seems it's the 16th installment that is absolutely insane is it one of those things where people didn't really play or give a shit about Valhalla and they're kind of just reviewing it based off what they remember Odyssey I doubt it like these are all you think it's yeah bigger yeah I don't well I don't I haven't read the review so I don't know but like I really wanted to get into Valhalla everyone's opinions into a statement on this podcast can I

ask AI what yeah yeah if i should play this game it'll make me feel yeah um no but i'm like i'm i'm pleasantly surprised i think i wasn't i don't know like i'm not i'm not a lot of that assassin's creed stuff has appealed to me in recent years and i really tried to get into valhalla and there was just too much shit going on who knows maybe it's the same thing where it'll just be like a big world full of ui elements and i'll be like nope not for me this isn't my type of game the thing that i like like and I'm not trying to like back up Ubisoft although I feel like I have done that a lot uh the thing

that I like about their open world games and I don't think they get enough credit for is that you could play those games without any UI markers and they do a really good job of describing how to get around in the areas and like it's kind of the UI is sort of like the easy thing I could point to that sort of describes this wider issue I have yeah it even goes down to like when I touch the controller the the animation system in that game means that they have to start walking which means it's a little bit later everything in that game has like 10 percent too much video game attached to it like the way

you talk to people the way the camera works the way combat works the quest markers the way the animation is it's like i cannot get away from the fact that i'm playing a video game when i played assassin's creed games and what you said i love all the like the first four massive massive fan of all those games you know brotherhood and 2 and all that sort of stuff.

And the thing I hated about those games was all the animus shit.

So I clearly have a thing where I just, like, from playing your historical video game, I want to feel like I'm in that part of history, and I never do.

It always feels like I'm playing a simulation, like, even to the point where I play games like Atomfall, which is clearly not a real place, but I believe I'm there.

So I don't know, maybe it has something to do with the fact that, like, it might be, like, an uncanny valley issue with historical games where like oh if they're actually trying to be historical and feel accurate that they sort of never can it's like they can never get to these event horizon because you know the closer they it's they're always like just almost they're almost there and it doesn't help that they have that meta layer of like the ubisoft store pops up when you hit the start button or like you get a ubisoft challenge points it's like just let me have the achievement brother it's okay

i don't need 45 points so i can unlock a etio skin all right right let's move 100 yeah there's so much of that and it's just it's it's a i don't know what it is about it but it's like nails on a chalkboard to me in terms of enjoying video games and those games are habitually doing it so hopefully i'm just say you hate yasuke and let's move on all right just which one who's samurai or whatever is the black samurai the black samurai i don't i just yeah i'm not gonna i'm not gonna get into that but we yeah i don't know enough about japanese history either way to say anything whatever it's those games

are silly it's we're just having fun but like especially with japan because remember the amount of fuss that was made about how it's more of a western studio making a game about japan is the issue i have with like being respectful to bubba and honestly i'm not getting into this because i i don't fucking have enough knowledge about it but like when that what was the game that came out the ghost of like that was a big part of that was them going on and on and on about respecting uh you know the the subject matter and i think you know and having the kurosawa mode and all that sort of stuff so i do think

there is something to that um and obviously they play fast and loose with a lot of like you know yeah it's like flaming unicorns and stuff like that you know what i mean fight gods yeah is there a flaming unicorn yeah absolutely you can buy it for 2000 ubisoft points oh my god So, I don't know.

They've obviously had a nightmare promoting this game for a litany of reasons, many of which have absolutely nothing to do with them.

So, at least that's funny.

That's going to piss off a bunch of weirdos that people are liking the game.

Oh, they'll spit it.

You know, they'll be like, oh, the reviewer likes.

Yeah, exactly. Works for Sweet Baby.

Sweet Baby. I'll stop.

I'll stop. I'm bringing it up.

I'm doing it to myself.

I can't not if the game is made by Sweet Baby.

Doesn't work. oh brother anyway trolls keep on trolling you know what time it is uh okay with that limp biscuit reference let's uh quickly talk about one other one jesse this is a long podcast um expelled what's this thing yeah i'll give a i'll give a quick on this this because i haven't played this is on that much of it it is on steam i know a bunch of corporate corporal bootlicking fuckers actually inkle are quite send me a floppy seem like a quite a fun company i don't know uh what their structure is like or how they work but no inkle uh if you know anything about their make their games they've

been making stuff for like 14 15 years uh commercially anyway uh they make a software called ink which is like uh twine their own version of that which is really cool but they make games like 80 days heaven's vaults uh island song grace yeah Yeah, 80 Days is awesome.

Pandragon, I remember that.

Pandragon, yep. The sorcery games, the conversions of those books, which are really good.

They've done a lot of really great interactive fiction stuff in this industry.

Beautiful art. Yeah, they're some of the best writers, I think, in the whole.

In terms of fun, challenge, the way they get over the top with it, how much writing there is, how many games they put out in their time is just wild to think of in terms of the words on the pages.

uh but expelled is again quick brief thing because i haven't played too too much of it but i think it's really cool uh it's their second in i guess what they're now calling the overboard series the first game was like there's a death on a ship did you do it did you not do it you have to sort of uh convince people oh i remember that yeah yeah yeah so i would describe this as like bully uh meets uh uh hitman if it was a story game so like the way that you play expelled is uh You work through it very quickly.

The tutorial is like you're a girl who's going to a private school.

It's got all the fun British names that I would butcher.

I'm not even going to bother trying to say.

Miss Maligatani I think is the name of the school.

She's like the prefecture.

It's really – it's got a great art style.

She's a prefect, not the prefecture.

She's not a region of Japan.

She's a prefect. Is that what you said?

Yeah, I thought I said prefect.

I thought you said prefecture.

Prefecture would be funnier.

She's my favorite. She's Miami prefecture.

Yeah. Sorry. Sorry, that might have been my brain.

I did just record Shift F1 before this.

We often talk about prefectures, so...

There you go. It's all mixed up.

Thanks to all of our...

What are the Shift F1 patrons called?

Title sponsors. Thanks to all our title sponsors, Cameron Ladd.

Yeah, so the Hitman thing I'm talking about, the way that the game works is like, basically it's a loop of time, but it's not like narratively a loop.

It's just a girl explaining what happened to her while she's at school.

And you almost maybe like Assassin's Creed might be a good comparison.

You work through these moments until you desync and you get expelled by the teacher, but you're trying to progress the story so you can figure out sort of what happened and you'll unlock narrative beats as you keep playing so you'll start off and like this girl gets pushed out of a window uh from the top of this tower and it's like this old stained glass window and she falls does she die does she not die you sort of figure that out uh really quickly but the way that the story plays out is is just like unlocked through different dialogue choices so like you'll you'll say i'm gonna go after that i'll

go to uh church and like we'll do the thing and we'll She'll have a little announcement.

We'll have the assembly for the morning.

And then from there, things unlock.

Or you get caught by the teacher.

And just the way that you unlock different beats, you have different objectives that you can go through that maybe don't push you forward to the next arc of the story.

But give you a new point to pull on in different parts of the story as time goes on.

Time moves whenever you make a decision as well.

So you'll start at 730 and then, oh, I clicked this dialogue option and then it passes, so on and so forth.

So sort of real time, things can happen in certain areas.

you'll see where characters are on this little map that you select uh it's just it's like very very fun in the same way that all of their games work it's one of those ones where you want to play it over and over i think i've played a highland song like four times they just and the story is kind of the thing that's dragging you through as well like the story is the thing that you're on like that's your motivation is like it's yeah watching it unfold uh is really really fun it's like there's so many different layers to the way things can go because you can like you could go Go bother your roommate

and wake her up. But then you learn, like, oh, she needs to find her slippers.

But, oh, before you wake her up, if you check under the bed, you know the slippers are there.

So now I'm like, now I want to replay and move her slippers and see what happens.

The way I'm describing it is very, like, juvenile, and that's sort of the mood of the game.

The player character, when you make dialogue options, there's, like, regular options.

Then there's one that turns up your, like, little shit knob.

Like, you're just a little shit.

You can see it's, like, plus four to being a little asshole.

and you click on that one and it's great because like okay now i know i'm being a jerk and like how does that impact the story how many more options does that give me uh throughout throughout the rest of the plot so i'm just in the beginning part i haven't it looks like there's maybe four or five other sections it's very cool i'll talk on it more next week but i think this is just another one of inkles games that i absolutely adore i think they make some of the coolest stuff expelled it's about 15 bucks i think at the moment on steam yep i think it's a bit of a can i just read the content warning

for this on steam because it is the most diverse list of descriptors uh the mature content description this game contains mild references uh mild references is a very funny way to lead up to references this game contains mild references to suicide abortion evangelism gym class medicinal drugs wait gym class i thought you were gonna say jim crow no gym class witchcraft blood drinking live burial devil worship fornication blasphemy and secondary school education i'm on board let's go content warnings on the uh title screen as well i didn't know any of that i didn't read the steam description so i

was like what am i about jesse we should do content warnings for the podcast because it would be insane oh my god it would just be a whole killing frog yeah frog shut up by the way i didn't i swear i didn't kill that frog i would not kill yeah all right buddy yeah enjoy your frog legs oh my god so many of them i was about to escargo but that's not frog legs that was a bunch of games expelled wanderstop w w tk 25 and Adam Fall and individualism in the dead internet age.

Hey, Frank, what's the name of that area in WWTK5 where you can make custom content community creations?

Yes. Damn. That's why we pay him the big bucks.

Sure is. I don't pay him anything.

That and also he gets us some emails.

I think we passed on it last week, so we better dive into them this week.

Frank, what have we got?

Yes, thank you. People can send us emails, podcasts at noclip .video or in our Patreon Discord and the podcast chat channel um this first one is kind of in line with what we talked about cartooner from on discord wrote the latest triple click episode talks about cozy games like stardew valley and wonder stop where you're escaping burnout but still technically working they bring up how coziness doesn't always mean a lack of tasks that need to be done it can mean different things different people that got me thinking about a recent episode where he talked about how these games aren't always as relaxing

as they seem so what games do you actually find relaxing for me death stranding comes to mind not so much the gameplay but the presentation music atmosphere it all just works that's good you guys got any come to mind yeah uh last couple weeks i have been playing religiously picross on my nintendo 3ds xl i love i love this game it's like you can't there's nothing to it there's no guessing there's no you just follow the rules and it's i get why people do crosswords now but you don't have to know uh hard words that have 14 letters in them you just have to know how to count it's really fun with with mobile

stuff i've been playing a lot of chess the chess .com app on my oh nice i've been teaching my daughter how to play chess and we were playing chess against each other what's your rank i should play some chess no just whatever yeah i guess just relaxing 7 000 or something wood league yeah exactly not good um for sure i mean my go -to if i'm like just trying to like burn time is usually like fifa or formula one like games that i can just kind of lizard brain my way through like that's that's uh but i tend not to like often when that happens i it's usually like a bit of a call for help for me of like

eh maybe maybe don't do that and i don't and i think that's the other thing as well not to constantly be going on about the whole um being a dad thing but like i don't i i i tend to not play games just to pass the time like i don't know maybe i spend more time on youtube on my phone for that which is probably not it's probably worse maybe but um usually like now my it's kind of like back when i used to like have a full -time job and then come home in the evening and have precious sort of gaming time like i have that kind of during the day where i like want to play something or i need need to play

something or whatever it is um i don't tend to have so many hours left over that i that i'd use it as a relaxing thing um anymore that's kind of i do remember that but that's i i do if i'm like traveling for sure like that's that's the time where i need to do that but not so much anymore um i like to play like old games that i kind of missed out on that i feel like are representative of weird pockets of game design um like that's why i started playing playing pikmin a couple weeks ago um playing minish cap the zelda game that a lot of people love that i never played i like to just be it's if one

of those games grabs me and i play the whole thing that's great but it's kind of fun to just have like a low stakes be like a tourist in that world and um yeah i i can't remember i was reading a game designer talking about this recently where they said that uh oftentimes the way that game does i think it might have been ralph coster saying that the way people interface with games when they make games is often to to play 15 minutes of a game and get like a little taste of it and then be like okay i'm out like right yeah i don't want to see the whole thing i just want to like sample the goods and then

draw it internally for inspiration so i like to just be like a tourist in games that i don't put any pressure on myself to finish oh uh one more uh that's not a puzzle game a flock that came out last year and and uh and co uh very very good just like relaxing video game the sound design alone it's worth turning on and just sitting in the forest listening to the bleats and the bloops of all the little creatures are you frank called duty no well no the uh my first thought was like oh mortal kombat one like the mortal kombat games and justice stuff because it's like yeah you pick up and do a match

for 10 minutes or like two hours and like listen to a whole podcast it has the permanent progression where it's like any character you pick you're leveling up that character getting cosmetics for that character or coins to spend in the combat crib whatever so lots of permanent progression but um yakuza all the yakuza games are the most delightful games games in the world because it's like they're just they're just like amusement parks there's so many side stories there's mini games there's arcades within yakuza you can play virtual fighter or you know any racing games so it's like like even right

now pirate yakuza i've done all the side quests the only thing left to do is just finish the story and i'm like ah i mean i'll do it but but like i otherwise i have the platinum and so it's like damn now now once i finish that i can go back and have yakuza five and six and then i'm all caught up hold on and then it's like well i i could replay yakuza 0 on xbox and get achievements but um yeah the yakuza games are like supremely just everything is delightful and even if i get distracted or whatever i just i will just leave the game on and listen to the audio because you'll have like the the street

crossing signs the konbini sounds the konbini music just every all the like the the audio soundscape of those games just the pedestrian noise everything it's like you are right in tokyo it's so good or you know uh doltenberry osaka or wherever you are yeah sick deck and next email ian james wrote in uh i heard about the game parapetia uh there's a there's a steam link in there uh today parapetia and i instantly thought of jeremy because of the amazing tone and mood that the game's atmosphere conveys seems like a strong pairing with the immersive sim gameplay i was curious if he's played it if he

hasn't there is a demo on steam whoa i have played the demo i have played the demo this is a um uh alt history polish cyberpunk junk im sim um very very cool i loved the demo uh it's i think it's is it out in early access or coming out it's 25 bucks on steam okay cool uh uh yeah i definitely will be playing uh i'll probably wait a little bit because when i play early access games i tend to play the early access version and then the full version comes out and i'm like i already played that so uh when this is 1 .0 i will 100 play it but um people should check out the demo it's really really interesting

and different and uh talk about games with fucking texture this thing is fucking this thing's got some some just some flavor on it awesome oh yeah looks neat i'm gonna check that out and then uh our last email is uh from jose r and they wrote hello noclip i'm curious how your mood affects how you feel when you're playing a game and the opinion you form after i sometimes remember when i'm reading or watching review or listening guys expressed your opinion that maybe that person's mental state can affect their opinion have ever gone back to a game and said man this game is awesome why did i not like

it hmm i definitely know that that is like beaten out of you in in when i worked at game spot like for like that is a you need to have that radar that if you're not into something or it's not your like there's a couple of barriers to that like if you're not good at one of those games as well which becomes an issue because like then you have experts playing games or people who like those games are generally experts at them playing those games but also like yeah i think you need to be able to divorce as much as possible um which i think changed a lot i think the way and i think this is i think it

changed overly so and too much to a fault when i think personality led coverage sort of became the thing with like youtubers and even places like giant bomb like like when people there was this sort of like over emphasis on someone's opinion being really important and it's sort of like this is what i think of this game and stuff and i think a lot of reviewing went way too and also like editorials and everything went way too far than that rabbit hole where people who maybe didn't have opinions that really people gave a fuck about were suddenly like all about what they thought of this and what they

which i don't know this is a whole you know other rabbit hole of like how do you objectively review games you can't but i do think that there is a space in the middle there where you are giving some of your like having insight into this piece of art but you're also like trying to meet it on its terms as well um which i think that was at least sort of beaten out of me from probably reading reviews as much as actually working at a place like game spot so yeah i'm hyper aware of if i am enjoying a game because of my mood and i'm also like i've you know had like decades of therapy so i'm also hyper

aware of my mood so i think that is probably part of it as well yeah i feel the same way it's one of those things where it's sort of like different layers where i can have a bad time and recognize that a game is of a certain quality or something like um or just that a game doesn't click with me like the indiana jones game last year i thought was incredibly competent and well made and like all these things and i just personally the game design of it did not click with me and so i simultaneously was like wow what a what a well made game that i don't like um yeah so it's it's a very weird sort of super

positioned thing where you can you know you can have a beautiful meal on the table in front of you and be like i don't like cilantro i think it's super important when you're dealing with any art at all like or sort of like life in general is to be able to like separate you know because because it's kind of good for you as well because it like lets you know your own preferences and who you are like you understand like it's the same reason i'm not saying like all the assassin's creed games have been bad since those four i liked you know what i mean but i think that's the way that i for a long time

is as a younger person related to art like there is good art and bad art and i like the good art and there's then a shit art that idiots like you know and i think that's a lot of what the discourse online is as well but like i said i'm like i'm not out here saying that like those games are bad i'm saying and because i'm not doing that because like you're having the same thing jeremy me where you're like looking at this game and going like well it's it's interesting then to learn about the aspects that make you feel that way like what is it about that game that creates the barriers for you and which is why

i'm i you know i i like the fact that i can think about assassin's creed and go oh it's because of these things and i also i'm catching that in like this is about me and how i relate to the game this isn't me saying that this is the case for lots of other people or more generally about like why these games don't work you know it's why that's so that's why the whole woke shit is so stupid because it's just a bunch of people who are too stupid enough not to be able to introspect at all and know that they have these biases like you can have preferences that's fine go play fucking you know steam's

got loads of games about fucking doing random weird shit and i mean you can go play but like having this sort of like dogmatic idea that that is good and bad and everyone else thinks the same thing and the people who don't think that are just they do think that but they're being disingenuous and they're lying and they're not saying it they're you know that's just because people are fucking either young or stupid like that's you know that's it's not an excuse so i think it's like i think it's a really good thing to be able to like set divorce yourself from the thing because then you get to analyze

the thing and you get to analyze yourself you know what i mean and hopefully it's not too masturbatory and it's it's actually something that benefits you yeah you i also think it's like that's kind of how you develop like an informed sense of taste about any kind of art is is being aware of the things that you like and dislike and being you know serious and passionate about them but kind of holding them lightly or it's like i i it i have game design opinions on like there are a lot of triple a games that are very popular games of the last few years that i think in terms of their game design could have come

out in 2001 like i i think they're unambitious and fucking they they bore the shit out of me for that reason because i'm like why aren't like there's more polygons but like try something fucking new like this is this is an art medium you should like at least try something new um but if some like if a friend of mine comes to me it's like oh man i played like whatever you know like the new destiny 2 dlc or something i'm not gonna be like oh you're a fucking idiot you must be stupid or something you fucking mud -eater yeah and it's like there are there are different reasons people engage with pieces

of art sometimes it's for entertainment sometimes it's for fun sometimes it's as like a serious piece of art sometimes it's to learn about game design and uh yeah i think it's important like take your take your own tastes seriously but be able to you know have have the self -awareness to like let go of that egoic attachment to like i am right and this is objective um be yeah be passionate but don't be a fucking asshole and i think without ranting too much about it i'll say one more thing i think the other thing that's good about this and maybe this is shakier ground but i think when you're able

to like separate how you feel and why you feel about something like i understand a lot lot of my perspective is based on the fact that where I grew up the country I grew up in the social class I was based in the you know I've lived in different countries now it's probably the thing that like helped me form that like meeting different people and all that sort of stuff my gender my age all that sort of stuff right like the way we talk about the internet is clearly based on the fact that we grew up when the internet was awesome and was getting kind of worse right so like that's like it's there's

all these external factors that are part And obviously, I think it is important to be able to divorce yourself from those things and like understand what subjectivity is.

But I think the other really important thing about understanding what subjectivity is, is being able to recognize when something is objectively right or wrong.

And I think this applies less to art and applies more to sort of like society or politics or, you know, war or any of these things.

And I think this is the reason why people who tend to be more introspective and probably tend to be less conservative in that way are able to.

And again, this is slippery slope.

I might be preaching to the choir here.

I might be just patting my own back and putting, you know, saying that, like, my thoughts are right.

But I think this is why people who are more sort of like less conservative leaning and more introspective are able to sort of have strong beliefs about things that they view as objectively wrong because they're analytical and because they can recognize when something is something that is my preference.

And I don't want to impose that on other people like so much of like liberal sort of, you know, societal politics.

Right. And also be able to look at, you know, something like war or foreign policy or things like that are that are sort of like it's not up to someone's preference.

like this is something that is actually creating a harm um so you know and again this is a bit of a slippery slope because i'm basically just but even the fact that i think analyzing that thought process is like part of it i think like when you can recognize subjectivity i think it's makes it easier to understand when something is more objectively um you know right or wrong are weird terms i don't like but more objectively harmful maybe or more objectively um um, uh, you know, beneficiary to people, you know, I don't know.

Yeah, for sure. No, there's definitely like a weird hyper individualism thing where we have conflated, um, subjective opinions and objective matters for someone will be like, well, listen, I just think we should get rid of all of those types of people in the country, but like, that doesn't mean we can't be friends.

And it's like, Whoa, man, like that's not like you like a Mexican food and I like Thai food.

Like we're not figuring out what to get for takeout.

And the crazy part of that justification is is they know that what they're saying is wrong like they have to or they wouldn't be like but we could still be friends like so you know that that's bad and you're justifying it by being like well but it's okay because you guys make great tacos so it's all right if i want you deported because i think your food is good like there's the way to objectively view the situation they can compartmentalize it right and even to your point danny like conservatives will say say exactly what you just said about their positions like like the hard right wing like mega guys

will be like you know people who feel my position are analytical and are able to look into their things and people who disagree with me are also you know they don't think about there's all feelings there's all facts they don't believe in facts they don't read the articles like i do it's it's this like bizarre when you disagree with someone politically especially in a world world where it's like information is is two different ways it's like the truth and and reality it oh it's like so fake you see you you read a completely different side of things and i'm not arguing that like the things that i

think are true in the same way that you were just saying that like you know i don't i'm not patting myself on the back i'm just making the point that like it's so easy to be like we need to look deeper and unfortunately because of the shape of the internet now and the way that it's got so bad people will think that that's what they're doing and in reality they're not anyway and people on any in any sort of political spectrum yes can fall foul of 100 of of group think and it's not thinking about thing i just think there's something especially what were you guys saying we're just there there's something

inherently like to a certain degree whatever you want to call it wokeness but let's go with political correctness that was sort of like a term that was a bit antiquated at this stage at a certain certain and people can be overly political correct when like i've you know we're all fucking weirdo punk kid grown you know fucking skateboarding breaking into places and like being fucking counter -cultural right and like a certain point you become the culture because you get old and the culture moves with you and whatnot but like at a certain point i think there is a there is a lack of the whole point

of the the pushback to something of political correctness is as much about cultural signifiers as it is about analyzing things deeper like it's actually a it's a pushback to analyzing things it's a don't worry about it like stop bringing that up don't like it's not a big thing like it's like why can't we just the common sense like all these these terms that are thrown out to basically be like don't think about this any deeper don't ask people about it don't ask other people it's not that deep bro right yeah yeah exactly stuff like that terminating cliches because you can have differing opinions

like i think the gun gun control debate in this country is really interesting because there are people who like live out in fucking ranches who have one feeling about gun control.

And there are people who, you know, are fucking middle -class sports shooters who have one opinion.

And then there are people who like whose kids go to school in inner city neighborhoods who have a totally different opinion.

And there's an opinion to be had.

I have my personal opinion on it, but I get that there's sort of like yardage may vary, but it's the, it's, that's fine.

Cause there's people have thoughts and opinions, but when you start, you get into this issue of of like oh just like you know i'll go with my groupthink and i don't want to talk about it i don't want to analyze it like that's where ignorance ends up being the sort of um you know ignorance points the way and nothing i mean we live in that world right now like that's you know we mentioned rfk earlier like i just can't even open the news at the moment just see the fucking stupid brother i've been checking blue sky the last like 10 minutes i want to rip my own eyeballs out of my head every time i

look it's like oh the reviews for assassin's creed shadows are decent oh hey how's gdc going and then it's like oh hey here's here's the new executive order that got signed all blueberries are now bombs and i'm like wait what happened to the blueberries i thought they were delicious it's yeah these are bombs they are now as per donald no no i i don't want to read the real things that are happening man i can't i've actually stopped even going on blue sky recently because i've every time i go on i'm like oh it's just a bunch of problems i didn't need to know about then you go over to twitter and you're

like ah yes anger no god That's what Twitter's gone insane at this stage.

Anyway. To answer your question, Jose, Haddaful Boyfriend, I didn't like it at first, and then I went back and played it, and I was like, damn, I want to have sex with these pigeons.

Oh, Dr. Shoe. What a dude.

I love that big fat pigeon.

He's a big buddy. Did you get the secret fun ending?

Dude, I got every ending in Haddaful.

Oh, what a goat. Who am I talking to?

I'm talking to... I have the fucking plushies.

Oh, there you go. I'm deep.

You're a Haddaful. Didn't they announce a new one?

Am I losing it? I could have swore.

I don't think there's been one since Holiday Star, the Christmas DLC for Hatoful Boyfriend.

Ooh, they made a Picross game.

Ooh, I know what I'm doing.

This is great. Is there Hatoful Boyfriend?

Did we call it three?

I don't know. Hatoful Boyfriend.

What is... I assume it is like an Anglicized version of a Japanese word. What does Hatoful mean?

Oh, I remember looking it up before.

it's it's it is a word play thing i think does is hato like bird or something or there's in english i think i think it's yeah oh yeah i just hato furu is heartwarming feel good yeah hato means pigeon yeah so i think that's what it is it's both of those maybe yeah yeah oh it's like feel good it's a word plan japan loves their word play yeah feel good heartwarming pigeon game that's what it is kind of at least that's what it feels like the first six hours yeah I've not played Doki Doki Literature Club but I think I know what that game is because I played I don't need to I don't need to I don't need

the anime girls that's what I got the anime pigeons for exactly Dr. Shoe is like the fucking Eric Cartman of that game like and you are and you were Scott of tenement it's real dark I kind of want to play it again yeah me too at least we can make an Unreal Engine version of that game ooh man we went off on one there that was good shit that was the podcast folks better let these boys go to the bathroom thanks for listening to our ramblings each and every week we really appreciate it we sometimes also make documentaries on the side when we're a little bit bored um at this stage mostly jeremy puts

them actually i feel like it's been a lot he's been editing and and making a lot of these things a lot of my projects have taken fucking forever to get finished and i put up a little video it'll be up on the channel later today so definitely by the time this is out that's basically like a you know five minutes of why we're working on the store fortress thing and and i was saying that the the experience of being a and noclip subscriber is that we don't say anything for months and then suddenly there's an hour -long documentary about at a counter -strike level it just appears yeah you know um but yes

uh the the first episode of shore fortress should be live by the time you're listening to this the second one will be available on early access as well it actually is right now and getting some good feedback on it and so we're excited to get the door fortress series out there it's a bunch of other stuff getting worked on jeremy's uh put together a great documentary we haven't announced yet because it's just too much pipeline at the moment and i'm obviously been chipping away at rm disco elysium one as well um cyberpunk will be later in you know towards the summertime um and yeah we've and we also have our

series on um everbloom the sort of technical how games are made series which will also be coming together you may also notice that we have some um some new graphics as well shout out to dan silverstone who did a sort of a re it's like it's basically the old logo but we sort of cleaned it up we gave it slightly a new font um uh and and so we're getting bumpers done for the patron and show and behind the scenes and all that just to sort of like solidify the look and we have new lower thirds um just because um they haven't been done since our good friend gerk made the original ones back in uh 2016

um so uh yeah we just uh tidied us up a little bit which is also pretty cool shout out to dan it's the homie yeah dan's the best dan's uh dan does incredible work um for us over the years he's done greatest hits and loads of other uh bits and bobs he's made some and obviously all the secret type stuff as well he worked on as well really cool stuff alright that's the podcast thanks so much for hanging out everyone we'll see you next week and talk about some more video games bye that's the thoughts on Danny's politics bye Thank you.

[Exploring Modern Game Design, Burnout, and the Culture of Productivity]-[Atomfall, Wanderstop, WWE 2K25]

📋 Summary

Navigating Modern Gaming: Atomfall, Wanderstop, and the Ethics of Productivity

Atomfall: A Fresh Take on First-Person Survival

Wanderstop and the Question of Burnout

WWE 2K25: Fan Service and Arcade Joy

Individualism in the Dead Internet Age

Final Thoughts: Taste, Subjectivity, and Introspection

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript